Since the point of all of this is to prevent evil downloading that robs these poor companies of money, I would like to see some figures relating to the amount of cash that the MPAA/RIAA spend on legislation and policy in an effort to 'save' money.
These companies are spending crazyass amounts on lawyers, lobbying, campaigns, etc. all the while mis-valuing a single download as an enormous profit loss (up to $22,000 for a single song if you believe the hype).
What I'm interested in knowing is:
(a) Does illegal file sharing of music/movies truly result in lost profits or does the exposure to said media actually drive sales?
(b) If (a) does result in a net loss, how much is it?
and the main thing:
(c) What is the amount of (b) compared to the amount of money the RIAA et al. spend on their unwinnable war against piracy? Is it profitable? Is it a wash? Or is it (my uneducated guess) negative equity resulting from a ignorant knee-jerk reaction to something they initially failed to adopt out of lack of understanding and now can't help but rail against like Cuchulain with the invulnerable tide?
Of course it's likely we'll never know, but these are the sort of questions that fascinate me. :o)
if you reference Title 17 504(c) 1 and 2 then you will see that the damages for willful infringement are up to $150,000 per work and otherwise set between $750 - $30000 per work.
These damages are 'statutory'. This means they are unrelated to the actual profits lost but rather are essentially a deterrent for others while also giving some compensation.
Hopefully, though, it's in response to (and replacement for) the absurdity of getting sued for $3mil. because you downloaded a few mp3's or movies.