An arm and a leg for 30 songs
Downloading songs to sample them is not fair use. Download 30 songs and pay $22,500.
After reading the opinion it's rather obvious that the judge is punishing Gonzalez for the 1300 songs on her harddrive, many of which consisted of songs she already owned. He looks at the 4th requirement for fair use which states, "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." Under his analysis, the 30 songs is sufficient evidence coupled with the Grokster decision to show that Gonzalez did not intend fair use. Earlier the Court points out that Gonzalez had purchased music after she had downloaded the songs from Grokster and Aimster.
So, out of 1300 plus songs with some discrepancies only 30 songs were illegal. The rest were all songs Gonzalez owned because she had the cd, or she downloaded the song, sampled it, and decided to buy it. There's definately a market there. Unfortunately for Gonzalez she just spent $750 for each of those songs.
Via How Appealing
update: Fixed the link to the case.
