Actual damages for single unauthorized download of software program held to be cost of single license fee

Oh well.......I had hopes. Back to the status quo.

@bernardswiss --

Yes, that is a different case and damages can climb when you distribute, but should still amount to no more than (more or less) than 1 license per copy distributed.

Of course, if you distribute a whole lot of copies --- bummer.

Does the software license say anything about reverse engineering being prohibited?

@gus3 -

Might, but the real problem is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Grrr.

The DMCA was just a trial balloon. Worse is on the way.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/civil-liberties-ip/

I'd offer a snide remark (or three) about the American Way, but Canada currently seems committed to aping its big neighbour next door: "Intellectual Property", essentially unsupervised surveillance by whim, high-carbon fossil-fuels "exploitation", killing off sources of info that don't buttress political or corporate agendas, the Wars on Nouns, whatever -- where the USA leads, our government will follow, enthusiastically repeating the slogans, eyes wide shut.

@BS --

I take one very very small satisfaction out of that. After so many years of having people harumphing about how bad we are hear, y'all are getting your comeuppance: we might have been first in some areas, but we are not uniquely evil.

My view on pirating is a mixed one, on the one hand the majority who do it would never actually buy the product in the 1st place and only pirate because it's there and they can access it but when faced with having to actually hand over money for it, then no, they would rather just go without or find an alternative.

So in that sense the content creators aren't missing out on lost revenue.. Not to the extent they are claiming.

@fatriff -

It's hard to know the extent to which copyright owners (which may or may not be the same as content creators) are missing out on lost revenue, but...

The claim by many that "pirates" wouldn't buy the content anyway should be taken with a huge grain of salt, at least when those "pirates" are end users of the material.

The reason?

Those folks want the material enough to steal it. That implies there is a price they would pay, even if the current price isn't it. One of the lesser-mentioned side effects of things like Netflix streaming and Amazon Prime instant videos has been a reported reduction in piracy as more material is made available for a reasonable price.

I think fatriff nailed it here. There are a ton of movies I would "like" to see but none of them good enough for me to break my one man boycott of movie theaters. On the other hand, I do follow several TV shows like Burn Notice, Supernatural, Fringe, Harry's law and The Walking Dead. For those, I turn to fastpasstv.ms as I am rarely in proximity to a television when they air and probably wouldn't sit through the first set of commercials before it pi$$ed me off and I found something else to do.

Would I pay .99 cents - 1.50 to watch those episodes? You bet I would but most of the networks won't release them any time soon after the air date due to them not wanting to mess up their DVD sales when the season ends.

So, the consumer will get what the consumer wants, be it television episodes or individual music tracks. We see a desperate last ditch effort by the **AA's in SOPA and PIPA to protect those old models. Unfortunately, money will rule the day, regardless of the public opinion of said legislation. My money is on this nightmare being passed in the dead of night, neatly hidden as a rider within some innocuous funding bill.

Do you think the author of SOPA, Lamar Smith is worried about not being re-elected? No, he's not. He will go to work for Chris Dodd and continue to live the lifestyle which he's become accustomed.

@helios --

As a Dr. Who fan without cable, I was thrilled to see current episodes of Dr. Who show up on Amazon Prime. They cost me a buck-99 to see, and I'm happy for the opportunity to pay that without having to fork over some outrageous sum for a cable package full of crap I don't care about.

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Dr. Who is or was the world's most pirated TV show. It also wouldn't surprise me to learn that many of those so-called pirates were just fans (like me) who wanted some reasonable way to watch the show.

I just did without my Dr. Who fix until I got QAM tuner that could pull in the BBC America ... TVoiP (hey, I think I just coined a new term) needs to get a lot better before I would be willing to dump cable. Plus the kids are addicted to Sponge Bob...

@JaseP --

It's really not that bad now, but it's easier if you're somebody like me who never did have cable.

I use a combination of mythtv + antenna to get local broadcast stations. The new digital world makes that amazingly good even if it doesn't do a whole lot for the content.

Add in Amazon Prime, hulu, and (for now, at least) Netflix, and we've got more options than we can keep up with.

Yeah, there are things I would like to have, but not enough to deal with the cable company and it's crazy fee v. service ratio.

Like sands through the hourglass, so are the Days of our Lives on TV.

We just entered into a new year, So make it a Good Productive Happy new year everyone.

After the BBC literally threw away years of their pop-culture heritage into the waste bin, "piracy" is their best protection against a repeat of such ignorant arrogance.

I think the idea here is that the prospect of only collecting a single license fee would discourage most potential plaintiffs from suing in the first place, as "damages" would be extremely limited.

@SR - I think that's right.

@gus3 - That's a good point.

yes, there is a price. a few years ago i had an ISP who charged a flat fee for the service and then 1$ per GB used. seems expensive, but the other ISPs in that area were charging 20-30$ more for the flat fee and had a limit of 20GB per month.

i usually watch a movie only once or twice, and have no interest to keep it around. i don't care about high resolution that much either. not enough to download a high resolution version even if it is available. so based on that i can estimate the price i'd be willing to pay: 0.5$ for an hour of DRM free entertainment. match that price, offer a reasonably speedy, globally available, full download, in a standard encoding, (no flash or another way to force me to watch in a browser, or any kind of streaming. this probably includes html5) and we can talk.

greetings, eMBee.

I think the perfect example of a reasonable price is the "experiment" by Louis C.K. He realized a higher gain by making a DRM free version of his self-produced commedy special available for just $5, online. I believe we would see a lot less piracy if you could download DVD quality movies and TV show seasons ("series" for the Brits among us) at reasonable prices like that. But, Hollywood wants to keep charging DVD prices for downloads in order to line their pockets. Unfortunately for them, the costs of running independent productions is falling rapidly, making the production of a show of the quality of, let's say... Star Trek: The Next Generation,... even with special effects,... possible on an amateur's budget. For those who are inclined, check out some of the fan-made Star Trek productions. Some of them will surprise you with their sophistication.

the humble indie bundle project is also a good pointer for what people are willing to pay for games.

on fan films: yup, collecting them all! :-) hidden frontier has 50 episodes!

greetings, eMBee.