The meeting was a small affair, with only 30 or so stakeholders in attendance, and it quickly became clear that even content owners had different takes on the situation. AdvertisementД«oth Patry and Sohn attendedВ aВ Copyright OfficeВ roundtable on statutory damagesВ a few days ago, and Public Knowledge's staff attorney Sherwin Siy has posted a fascinating writeup of the closed-door session. Even accounting for a punitive penalty, that seems absurdly high. Public Knowledge head Gigi Sohn testified before Congress last yearВ that statutory damages are already 'disproportionate penalties for infringement,' pointing that it hardly seems fair to bill someone like Jammie Thomas more than $9,000 per songВ when each track costs a buck.

The industries pushing it (music, especially) have an 'unslakable lust for more and more rights, longer terms of protection, draconian criminal provisions, and civil damages that bear no resemblance to the damages suffered,' he said. We've reported on the bill before, noting that Google's top copyright lawyer (and the man who wrote a seven-volume treatise on the subject of copyright law), William Patry, called the bill the most 'outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US.' The change to statutory damages is contained in the PRO-IP Act that is currently up for consideration in Congress. Sound fair? Proportional? Necessary? Not really, but that doesn't mean it won't become law. In the RIAA's perfect world, each copied track would count as a separate act of infringement, meaning that a copying a ten-song CD even one time could end up costing a defendantВ $1.5 million if done willfully. The issue is compilations, which now are treated as a single work. Not content with the current (and already massive) statutory damages allowed under copyright law, the RIAA is pushing to expand the provision.

Dhe want 5 million song