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Civil and criminal penalties
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Unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials, such as movies or music
to which you do not own the copyrights and do not have permission to distribute, is against the law
(Title 17 United States Code, Section 501 et seq.). The civil liability is either up to $30,000 per
incident or actual damages plus any profit you received from the copyright infringement. (In most
cases, the plaintiff—the copyright holder—asks the court for the maximum statutory
damages, as they are usually greater than the actual damages.) If the infringement is deemed to be
willful, statutory damages are up to $150,000 per incident.
An incident is a single instance of a movie or song track being downloaded. Therefore a full album
of 15 songs represents 15 incidents for each time the album is downloaded. That works out to
potentially $450,000 per album for an inadvertent infringement, or $2.25 million for willful
infringement. If the infringement is deemed to be willful with intent to profit (you are in the
counterfeit DVD business, for example), you may also be charged with a criminal offense and subject
to up to ten years in Federal prison.
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