Piracy, It's Illegal

I have done more and more research on  piracy, and its consequences. Piracy is more punishable, serious, and wrong than I ever thought. Learning the serious consequences someone could end up serving is a scary thought. Music is my life, I know that I could not live without it, and now I realize what piracy does the bands I love. It ruins their work, their income, and careers. I never really put it into perspective until now.

I decided to look up an example of a Piracy Case  that was taken to court in 2007. In this example, a single mother from Minneapolis was charged with piracy for stealing from six record companies. Apparently the computer security experts hired by the record companies, traced the songs back the mothers IP address. Even after having this evidence, the woman still pleaded not guilty. The hard drive that was supposedly the home of the illegal downloads was never used in the case; the mother stated that the original hard drive was defective and had to be replaced.

A total of 1,702 songs were illegally downloaded, but only the top 24 were considered in the case. At the end of the trial, the jury did not buy the excuse of the defective hard drive, so they ordered that she pay $220,000, or $9,250 per song. This might seem like a lot of money, but it is a better fate than paying a total of $150,000 per song.

This mother is breaking the law of downloading songs illegally, stealing from record companies, and musicians. Her punishment of paying fines seems like a fair trade, rather than having to pay more than double what she did, not having jail time, and not being charged for the 1,702 songs that were stolen. Studying the acts of piracy has made me think twice before I take the easy way out.