Some of the guys from a warez distrobution group were given 17 years.
Obviously they were responsible for a large amount of piracy but at the end of the day, no matter how great an amount of piracy they were responsible for, I'd still like to see ONE person that got damaged emotionally or in any way other than financial, as much as a rape victim, parents of a murdered child, even just victim of rape.
There are other cases where the RIAA has demanded like over $15,000 from students who were distrobuting files on their school networks.
Basically they've put these students in the situation where their lives are financially destroyed before they even are started.
Most students do it for a laugh of just because they're bored, not to cause serious harm.
They're given punishments to 'make an example of them' which basically means they're getting punishments FAR worse than they deserve to scare other people and these individuals are having their lives ruined so that RIAA can try convince people that £15 for a cd is a reasonable price when I know for a fact I could make the cd for 50p.
The artist needs money sure and so do their promotional companies, managers etc but £14 per cd profit or 1400% profit is OVER THE TOP.
I'm a part time dancer and so have worked with a couple of artists and know a few people who are starting off, some of them sold 10's of thousands of records and barely made a few thousand off of it.
They didn't get the money for their work - their label did - That's WRONG - they're the criminals far worse than the people downloading the songs.
They're not fighting for that artists rights because they care about them so much, they're fighting because it's them that's loosing the majority of the money and they use the 'poor artist' as a sympathy point.