In a four-page final ruling issued Wednesday, US District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper entered the multimillion-dollar judgment against TorrentSpy parent company Valence Media for willfully inducing, contributing and vicariously allowing copyright infringement on its website.

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I think this comes as a timely reminder that Copyright is a real issue that we need to be careful of and is the very reason this site has strict rules relating to copyright.

I only wish there was a little more consistency in the way copyright laws are enforced.

Consistency in enforcement is a huge problem. The companies that take copyright infringers to trial are usually big players with deep pockets and the resources to grind through a lengthy trial.

Most people who have work that is legally copyright protected will send 'cease and desist' letters to the infringers, hoping they will stop their activities based on the threat of a lawsuit. Many times it does work, but there are times when you get the big wave off from the infringer.

The artist now has two choices: drop it nad develop new designs or take the culprit to court. Most small business artists will drop it and move on. Thye ususally don't have the money and resources to run their business and fight a lawsuit. Some samll artists have filed lawsuits against large corporations and won. There was one a few years agao when an artist sued Target for copyright infringement and won.

It just makes what we do all the clearer and you Rock have taken strong measures to explain and enforce the rules here.

Definite kudos to you for that, Rocky!

As for inconsistency, some copyright owners recognise and value it when their rights are respected; others have been burned in the past, or fear what they've seen happen to others; still others (Starbuck's and Disney, for example, as well as the Olympics) react more along the lines of hysterical jealousy or borderline psychotic mania. It's a bit like having to live next to someone with multiple personalities, when at least one of those personalities is insane.

One of my own favourite incidents was when Linden Labs, owners of Second Life, reacted to the parody site Get a First Life by sending, not a Cease and Desist letter, but a Proceed and Permit letter.

By contrast, we sometimes wonder, here in Washington state, if the Olympics committee is going to try someday to sue the Olympic National Forest out of existence.

I think it highlights how copyright laws have spun out of control and been used for far more than they where even intended. By that I mean it often seems like copyright is being used to try and control the internet, or just generally used to hoc more money out of us.

A great example of the stupidity of these laws is that in NZ it's illegal to take a music track off a CD and store it as a computer file (mp3 etc), but it's perfectly legal to buy a mp3 version of that same track from an online store and keep it on your computer (or mp3 player).

Yet meanwhile there are sites openly selling copied from TV versions of shows and movies, of which I have reported several times on both the MPAA and FBA copyright sites.. and nothing's happined!!!

It's seems that even the FBI and MPAA only investigate reports made by the actual copyright owner.

It's madness.. well actually it's stupidity.. Stop the world! I wanna get off!