Copyright = Most Important Law Ever (Score 1)

According to Congress, Copyright Law is the most important set of laws ever written. I say this purely from a damages standpoint: for antitrust violations, patent infringement, securities fraud, toxic torts, and other socially detrimental acts for which civil remedies are provided, often the greatest measure of damages afforded by law is trebled (3x actual damages). With copyrights, however, that number can be 150,000x actual damages. Undedr the methods proposed in the PRO IP Act, someone caught with an iPod full of pirated songs (30,000 songs, let's say) can face a maximum penalty of ~$4.5 BILLION in statutory damages. Somehow, this seems a little ridiculous--to put it in perspective, most record companies average less than ~$700 million in sales. So the "theft" mentioned above is valued at more than 3x TOTAL Revenues for some companies! And in patent infringement or antitrust cases, the injured party has to PROVE damages. Not so in the case of copyright - it's strict liability. My personal feeling on this is that Congress should go back to the drawing board--i.e., the Constitution--and limit copyright protection to the "Authors" mentioned in the text of Article I. Musicians, movie studios, and more importantly, publishing clearinghouses != authors as the term was used in 1787, and so should not get the same protection granted to AUTHORS. But this is what happens in any system where elected officials rely on private money to campaign for office--only the wealthiest and most powerful interests will receive representation, no matter how invidious or destructive their goals may be.