Pocket Change Punishment

[Joanne98]

For OpEdNews: Steven Saw - Writer

Approximately a year ago, a jury fined a college student, Joel Tenenbaum, $675,000 for sharing some 30 songs over a popular file sharing network.1 He could have been fined up to $5.4 million, or $150,000 per infringement. Just weeks before, Jammie Thomas-Rasset was fined $1.92 million, or $80,000 per song, for sharing just 24 songs. It is too bad the SEC doesn't have the ruthless and blood thirsty lawyers who work for the RIAA. Because if it did, they would definitely have obtained a settlement much more worthy of the word "punishment".

Just days ago, Goldmans Sachs agreed to settle their securities fraud case against the SEC for $550 million, less than 50 cents on the dollar of the overall infringement.2 Being that Goldman made $12.1 billion in 2009, I'd hardly call that a punishment. It's more like pocket change. Goldman's payout amounts to only 3.4% of their bonus pool. Executives will pay more to the IRS in taxes than defrauded investors will receive in compensation.

Meanwhile, AIG, the company who was bailed out to the tune of $180 billion, had been shelling out some of that money to pay off their allegations of fraud. As it turns out, while hard-working Americans were losing their jobs, houses, and retirement, while at the same time being essentially robbed by the government to bail out AIG, the good-boy network had been filing incorrect accounting records, manipulating stock prices, and participating in anti-competitive practices since as far back as 1999.3 At the end of the day, AIG had to pay back a mere 1/2% of their take in a government issued bailout for some 6 years of illegal behavior.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Pocket-Change-Punishment-by-Steven-Saw-100717-562.html