http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.htmlIt's massive and personally I think it's barely even readable in many sections. I haven't read the entire document, but this section was alarming and confirms what I've read elsewhere regarding unreasonable remedies for copyright infringement:
(c) Statutory Damages. —
(1) Except as provided by clause (2) of this subsection, the copyright owner may elect, at any time before final judgment is rendered, to recover, instead of actual damages and profits, an award of statutory damages for all infringements involved in the action, with respect to any one work, for which any one infringer is liable individually, or for which any two or more infringers are liable jointly and severally, in a sum of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 as the court considers just.
So here's the issue for me. The real protection should be against having someone profit from an artist's work against the will of the artist. What's happening here is that for those who have done
nothing but created a copy of a song to hear - or just to see if it's the song they were even looking for, a jury must choose a penalty of between $750 and $30,000 at a minimum, since various subsequent fine doubling and other clauses apply as well. So let's say you've just joined Limewire Pro and searched for songs and began downloads. Furthermore, the names of these songs are frequently inaccurate. You could be looking for "shake it up" and wind up with a thousand matches that look perhaps close to what you're looking for. Let's assume an inexperienced user enters "Shake" and get's the first 1000 songs in the result set.
Well little Bobbie Bad Fortune wakes up to the following possibility:
Average $750 with $30,000 = $15,375. Let's go conservative and stick with $10,000 per. Now we're looking at 1,000 songs so that would be a
$10,000,000 fine
In reality the jury looks at the situation so they may be kind enough to low ball the offense. With a jury of kindhearted peers we're still looking at a mandatory fine of
$750,000 
Oh and just in case you were wondering, it's not an individual artist funding this lawsuit. It's the record company, or the "owner" of the copyright. Therefore the rewards will be sent directly to them and not the artists, for the most part. Is there someone left in this world that sees this as fair, helpful, or in any way a good thing? And just imagine if these philanthropic record companies decide to filter by suspected capacity to pay for these "infringements?"
Here's to their bankruptcies
