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back to article Depressed Scottish file-sharing nurse gets 3 yrs probation

Auxiliary nurse Anne Muir, 58, has become the first person to be convicted and sentenced for illegal filesharing in Scotland. The Ayr Sheriff's court has sentenced her to three years' probation after she admitted sharing a stash of more than 30,000 music files online. Muir was charged by Strathclyde police following an …

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  1. SteveBalmer
    Megaphone

    Ayr Sheriff's court website hacked.

    I'm guessing Anonymous (the patron saint of freeloaders), will be hacking the Ayr Sheriff's court website soon then....

    It's disgraceful how they are invading this poor womans rights to steal stuff.

    1 15
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      She didn't steal, no theft occurred.

      She violated copyright, she did not steal. But that doesn't sound scary enough I guess. Maybe until you understand English you should just stop talking.

      8 1
    2. asdf
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      long live copyright

      I am so glad corporations such as Disney fight so hard to make copyright eternal as we have to make sure that steamboat willie will never belong to the public. I mean we can't have the tragedy of the commons occurring with such valuable IP (if somebody doesn't own everything then we have nothing but dirty communism after all). I mean after all not only are you entitled to profit off your hard word but your great grandkids should have to lawyer up and fight over your vast fortune.

      3 0
  2. Peter Clarke 1
    Alert

    Cost per Track

    £54,000 for over 30,000 is a little over £1.50 per track. Someone is buying their MP3s at the wrong store.

    5 0
    1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)
      Reply Icon

      Re: Cost per Track

      I think the way they work these things out is akin to the way they work out the 'street value' of big drug hauls ie out by quite a considerable amount.

      9 0
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Pirate

        Cost per track

        If she has 30,000 tracks I'd bet there are a good few duplicates in there which would not have been bought and paid for many times over had the route chosen to obtain them been the legal one.

        Plus, as a nurse, I doubt she would be able to afford 54k in the first place, and so would therefore never have been able to pay 54k for the tracks, and therefore the financial loss could not be that high. Of course that does not include the possibilty that some of the people she shared the files with might have otherwise bought legal copies, which may skew the figure in the opposite direction.

        I don't condone file sharing but the case seems a little muddled to me. On the one hand the prosecution is for sharing files, but the figure given is the cost she would have paid to own them herself, not the perceived costs associated with her sharing them to others, although I appreciate this figure would be even harder and more controversial to quantify.

        2 0
      2. Anon the mouse
        Reply Icon

        Cheap for Karoake tracks

        Karoake tracks are generally £3 per track. Not your usual 59/99p

        1 0
  3. The Fuzzy Wotnot
    Pint

    Will it change anything?

    Will it make any difference? The media corps think they have a victory, the court employes have completed another day's work and just one person has been an example of.

    I bet over the next 60 mins many, many more than 54,000 illegally aquired MP3 files will traverse "the toobs" and many millions will carry on as if nothing has happened.

    Was it worth it?

    4 0
    1. rciafardone
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      No

      no, it didn't.

      0 0
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    Throw away the f*cking key!!

    They should lock the EVIL 58 year old nurse up. The multi-billion pound recording industry must be protected from SCUM like 58 year old nurses AT ALL COSTS. How else are artists like [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and [REDACTED] going to be able to pay for their coke and hookers?

    Fuck the BFPI.

    26 2
    1. david 63
      Reply Icon

      I think I'll start a band called [REDACTED]...

      ...The you'll be in trouble...

      3 0
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Mushroom

      Nail her up, I say!

      Nail some sense into her!

      0 0
    3. trarch
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Down

      Re: Throw away the f*cking key!!

      I heard artists earn around 1% of each sale and the rest goes to the label. That's a whole load of BS in and of itself. Then you get these artists who, despite being *paid* to *work* at gigs, have a whole host of demands that go along with each one, such as tea made from leaves picked by blind Tibetan monks brewed with the tears of a child born by immaculate conception The entire industry is messed up, it would never slide elsewhere.

      2 0
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Paris Hilton

        Nail her?

        Why, is she hot?

        0 0
      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        So in other words...

        ... she did the bands out of £540 between them?

        0 0
  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What was she using?

    Did she have some sort of mega karaoke torrent or something?

    1 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Good question!

      Karaoke tracks are hard to find on torrents. I mean... So I've been told.

      1 0
    2. Mediocrates
      Reply Icon
      Coat

      mega karaoke torrent

      Sounds like a name for a bad monster movie "Mega Karaoke Torrent vs. Giant OctoCorp"

      1 0
  6. James Hughes 1

    I'm impressed

    That a person of 58 has enough knowledge to have done this heinous crime. Good for her. The Scottish evening class system must be better than here in the UK.

    0 2
    1. Brian 6
      Reply Icon

      Scotland

      Scotland is in the UK........

      3 0
      1. Mark 65
        Reply Icon

        @Brian 6

        Not if Alex Salmond as his way

        0 0
  7. Kubla Cant

    I am shocked, appalled and disgusted...

    ...to learn that there 30,000 karaoke tracks in existence. Never mind the record industry, this represents a threat to intelligent life on this planet.

    If this is true, why does everybody sing "My Way"?

    7 0
  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    (untitled)

    She has my sympathy. It seems to me to be just a vindictive action for the sake of it. Enormous collections like that aren't going to get all listened to anyway, and clearly wouldn't have been bought. And any wrongdoing is in the downloading not the leaving around for others to see. So are they going to go after all those passing disks to friends too, or is it just the easy targets they amuse themselves with?

    3 0
    1. frank ly
      Reply Icon

      Actually...

      "And any wrongdoing is in the downloading not the leaving around for others to see."

      I'm not sure if the law changed, after Mandy had a nice holiday on a rich man's yacht, but it used to be that the downloading was not illegal. It was the provision or 'making available' that was against copyright legislation.

      A legal eagle may be along in a minute.

      0 0
      1. Ojustaboo
        Reply Icon

        Yep

        "but it used to be that the downloading was not illegal"

        Correct, well it's not a criminal offence

        The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended by the Copyright and Trade Marks (Offences and Enforcement) Act 2002, currently protects copyrighted materials. People who download copyrighted recordings without permission face civil actions. Downloading can also constitute a criminal offence IF the downloader distributes the material.

        0 0
  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    (untitled)

    Anyway as I understand it, it isn't theft, but copyright infringment? so what's this "right to steal" comment?

    4 0
  10. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Archetypical filesharer

    Exactly the archetypical filesharer the music industry had hoped for!

    0 0
  11. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    ... if I had 30,000 karaoke files...

    ... I'd also be really depressed.

    4 0
  12. David 45
    Facepalm

    A vocal protest?

    Not even "proper" music! Who wants to listen to karaoke songs with the vocals removed? Why go after her if the main artist can't even be heard? Ludicrous.

    0 0
  13. Mectron

    Wrong Article title

    File Share ILLEGALLY convited onver somethign that is not a crime.....

    i whould question how they got the so called proof in the first place....

    Scottland, now a puppet in the hands of of international terrorists....

    0 0
    1. Brian 6
      Reply Icon
      Stop

      @Mectron

      "File Share ILLEGALLY convited onver somethign that is not a crime....." Did you ever go to School ? Did your spell checker just give up ? Sharing copyrighted songs is illegal.

      "i whould question how they got the so called proof in the first place...." whould ?

      "Scottland, now a puppet in the hands of of international terrorists...." Scotland (1t) international terrorists..... You lost me m8

      0 0
    2. Toastan Buttar
      Reply Icon
      Mushroom

      You're forgetting something...

      "Scottland, now a puppet in the hands of of international terrorists...."

      Never going to happen - we've got Smeato!

      http://johnsmeaton.com/

      0 0
  14. Anonymous Coward
    Trollface

    Think about the struggling artists

    2010 pay:

    Philippe P. Dauman CEO Viacom $84.5 million (in 9 months)

    Jeff Bewkes, Time Warner, $26.1 million (35% pay rise

    Leslie Moonves, CBS, $56.9 million (32%)

    Robert Iger, Walt Disney, $28 million (30%)

    6 0
  15. Kwac
    FAIL

    @Mectron

    "File Share ILLEGALLY convited onver somethign that is not a crime...."

    Sorry Mectron, it is.

    Downloading a file illicit, distributing a file is illegal.

    E.g torrents download & upload at the same time and so CAN be illegal (depending on whether you are downloading 'Barry Trotter & the Half-Witted Audience or a Linux installatfion CD).

    0 0
  16. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Scotland, now a puppet in the hands of of international terrorists....

    I wouldn't go saying that around the streets of Lockerbie if I were you......

    0 0
  17. Trev 2

    Can understand having 30,000....well...

    Actually can't really understand having 30,000 songs without words, but why on earth did she need to file share them or is this more a case of not understanding that when you download them it also uploads for other people?

    Were there 30,000 individual songs or just 30,000 uploads? Can imagine the same song getting uploaded countless times if people request it.

    Something odd going on...

    0 0
    1. Woodgar
      Reply Icon

      Re: Can understand having 30,000....well...

      I think that was the point of the "boost self esteem" bit - sort of, "look at the size of my stash" kind of thing.

      0 0
  18. westlake
    Pint

    Re: Untitled

    >> any wrongdoing is in the downloading not the leaving around for others to see.

    You do understand the concept of file sharing?

    The consequences of hosting an archive of 30,000 unlicensed files, ready for downloading, and further, unlicensed, redistribution?

    It doesn't matter that it is dear old Granny who is playing Lady Bountiful with other eople's property.

    0 1
  19. T J
    Mushroom

    BFPI now targetted.....

    ......in sights......awaiting strike command.........

    1 0
  20. TeeCee Gold badge
    Mushroom

    Yup, waaay too contentious to do her for file-sharing.

    But having and presumably using 30,000 karaoke tracks? Now that *should* be a crime....

    0 0
  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    (untitled)

    Concept of file sharing ?

    So someone who leaves a book by the photocopier is doing wrong ? No, not in my opinion.

    0 0
  22. Scotty
    Big Brother

    £54k my arse!

    I dont know where they got their figures from.

    I have 17,000 genuine karaoke tracks on 1200 discs, and it has cost me the princely sum of £3900.

    Where the other 13,000 come from doesnt cost another 50 Grand FFS!!!

    1984 ~ 80's cheese

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