Does The Punishment Fit The Crime?

Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., admitted in court that he downloaded and distributed 30 songs, if you were on the jury that set the fine how much would YOU fill was fare to fine the 25 year old student? take into account Tenbaum's history of file-sharing from 1999 to 2007, the prosecution describing him as "a hardcore, habitual, long-term infringer who knew what he was doing was wrong." Tenenbaum admitted on the witness stand that he had downloaded and shared more than 800 songs, also bear in mind the music industry has typically offered to settle such cases for about $5,000, though it has said that it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders, well this must be one of the worst offenders they were talking about, 30 songs, $22,500 for each incident of copyright infringement, to save you doing the math, $675,000 so he will spend the rest of his life working for the 4 record companies concerned, still look on the bright side, last month, a federal jury in Minneapolis ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, must pay $1.92 million, or $80,000 on each of 24 songs, after concluding she willfully violated the copyrights on those tunes, so it looks like she and her kids and her kids kids will be working for the record companies to pay off the debt!