From 99 cents to 9,250 dollars

And now to a completely different type of pirates.

I recently installed iTunes on my computer. I'm not much of a music person, but it turned out that the broadband internet access package I've subscribed to includes 10 free iTunes songs per month. iTunes obviously hopes that I want more than that, and then pay 99 cents per song to them. I'm not sure I'll do so, but 99 cents per song is something I'd consider reasonable pricing. Because today's news is that you can end up paying $9,250 per song. That is how much Jammie Thomas from Duluth, Minn., now has to pay for each of the 24 songs she (or her children) was sharing through Kazaa, a music file-sharing peer-to-peer program. Commenters observed that Mrs. Thomas is unlikely to be able to pay, and that even if she did, it wouldn't even cover the legal costs of the music industry. Nevertheless the decision is considered to be a key victory in the battle of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) against music piracy.

The case shows well the principal difficulties of music piracy. Pushing a single mother into bankruptcy because one of her children had Kazaa running on the family computer is not going win the RIAA many new friends. It is unlikely that Jammie Thomas really caused $222,000 in damages to the music industry. The problem is that there are millions of Jamie Thomases, each causing a tiny bit of damage to the music industry. And there is no way to catch them all, and determine exactly how much damage each of them did. So the RIAA goes after a few cases, preferably against people who are unlikely to be able to afford the same quality of lawyers as the RIAA, and establishes some harsh precedents in the hope of scaring the millions of small pirates away.

I know that on the internet this is a minority opinion, but I am opposed to piracy (or "file-sharing" as it is euphemistically called) of music, videos, or software. Being a gamer I've seen game companies make good games and then go bankrupt, because while many people played the game, few people were paying for it. And I hold the pirates partially responsible for all those copy-protection measures like Starforce, need to insert CD when playing, Steam activation, and all other means that end up hurting legal consumers more than pirates. That doesn't excuse the companies that introduced those bad copy-protection measures or who sue people into ruin, but the people who stole those companies' intellectual property are also to blame.

There are no innocents in this battle. The pirates claim that file-sharing is a victim-less crime is as false as the industries claim that each copy constitutes a damage to them equal to the full retail price of the item. Most people who grab a copy of something from the internet wouldn't have paid for it otherwise. But some would have. The pirates hurt the companies, which then spreads the hurt to their legit customers. If there was no piracy, music, videos, and games would be cheaper, and there would be no annoying copy-protection measures. Like in most wars, it is the bystanders who get hurt most.