Ofcourse, noone except RIANZ (and their lawyers) will get anything out of it. It would be nice if the artists got their cut from the $6.57 at least, right?

FFS..!!

Good grounds for having your kids taken off you.

The versions of Song 2, Pretty Fly For a White Guy and Scooby Snacks that we found all sounded pretty good even at decent volume.

This whole scenario is just more of the same old same old socialist crap- corrupt bureaucrats in bed with a corrupt private sector.

Is that true these days? Video from YouTube used to be fairly low resolution, but now you can watch 720 and 1080 versions of videos. That’s resolution that matches or exceeds television quality. I presume that the audio quality has increased to match the video quality. But, how good does it have to be to sound good on mp3 player headphones while someone is walking down the street or traveling on a bus?

I don’t see how saving YouTube clips on your PC can be illegal. That would mean anyone storing any web content locally would be a criminal. Right click on a web image and save, and you could be fined. Save Page As, and you could be fined. Save a Word document to read it later, offline, and you could be fined. But assume it is true and saving clips off YouTube is a crime… We’re left with the perverse situation that someone streaming a music video off YouTube and watching it on their smartphone while they’re on a bus is not a criminal. But someone saving that same music video offline and watching it later on their smartphone while they’re on a bus is a criminal. Or, to put it another way… If the video is being delivered via Telecom’s network then you’re not a criminal, but if it is being delivered by your smartphone’s onboard memory then you are a criminal.

This was a very soft case for RIANZ as the respondent readily admitted to the downloading of the songs (and she apologised for it). RIANZ drew a long bow with some of its claims and this early decision is likely to clip its wings in trying to make such extravagant claims for financial loss in the future.

RIANZ claimed that once the user had downloaded the 3 songs to her PC that the peer-to-peer programme then made the songs available to anyone else to upload from her PC and that the Tribunal ought to punish her for that too, and RIANZ further claimed 700,000 in NZ access peer-to-peer files like this every month. The Tribunal rejected this argument.

In the end the Tribunal rejected RIANZ inflated claims about its supposed financial loss and instead calculated the total loss to RIANZ for the three songs downloaded to be just $6.57 ! The remainder of the “fine” was for filing fees incurred by RIANZ, and a deterrence fine of $360 ($120 per song).

And let’s face it – music piracy is not a life-ruining offence.

I await to hear of new software to hide ones IP address………..

Like… people who speed all the time but only get caught now and then….

So… it was $600 odd for… quite a few more than only three songs and whatever else they thiefed?