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Aussie students escape jail for online music piracy

Unknown
edited November 2003 in Science & Tech
<b>Australia's first criminal trial for online music piracy has ended with two students each receiving suspended 18-month jail sentences.</b>
[blockquote]Charles Kok Hau Ng, 20, and Peter Tran, 19, ran a music-swapping site called MPW3/WMA Land. Available for download were 390 CDs, some 1,800 tracks. The pair charged no money for their service, but were responsible for big losses to the record companies. According to the Prosecution, the losses to piracy attributable to the site was AUS$60m. According to the Australian music industry the loss was somewhat higher - AUS$200m. Hmm. Not very scientific, is it? The assumption is, of course, that each music download is a sale lost. Such an assumption can safely be made in the case of, say, software. But it simply does not hold water, in the case of music. [/blockquote]
<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34074.html&quot; target="_new">Register</a>

Comments

  • EnverexEnverex Worcester, UK Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    SM-Bot had this to say
    Such an assumption can safely be made in the case of, say, software.

    Thats as bad, and complete BS too. Everyone knows that 60% of software downloaded illegally wouldn't be purchased anyway if it hadn't have been downloaded. And the figure would be even higher for music. They just like to make up figures to make everything sound much worse than it actually is.

    NS
  • CammanCamman NEW! England Icrontian
    edited November 2003
    NightShade737 had this to say
    SM-Bot had this to say
    Such an assumption can safely be made in the case of, say, software.

    Thats as bad, and complete BS too. Everyone knows that 60% of software downloaded illegally wouldn't be purchased anyway if it hadn't have been downloaded. And the figure would be even higher for music. They just like to make up figures to make everything sound much worse than it actually is.

    NS

    Yeah I agree, as with music, a lot of the software people download would not be used at all if it couldn't be downloaded, so to chalk that up to a lost sale is foolish.
  • maxanonmaxanon Montreal
    edited November 2003
    Yeah, but think of all the people who burned the album and never bought it. A lot of the dl'd music is deleted (or archived) almost immediately, but there's that percentage (be it 40% or 10%) that would have bought it if they didn't dl it. If someone includes one song on a personal mix then its piracy.

    It sucks to be in the media industry right now. People are stealing the stuff, plain and simple and they can't do anything about it.
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