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Though I do agree with the concept of punitive damages, I think to inflict them this harshly in this scenario abuses the concept. Obscene punitive damages were originally sought for to not only punish large corporations for unethical practices, but to set an example to discourage further abuses by other corporations. But due to the resources needed by record industry lobbies and the like to take normal Joe-schmo individual people through such lengthy litigation is counter productive to the very idea; an infinitely small number of intellectual property thieves are ever prosecuted and rarely pay, making the idea of it as a deterrent laughable. Though I do agree that the record industry has been hemorrhaging money since the popularity of P2P programs has exploded, I am vexed and, frankly, pissed off that they would rather waste money and blame the intellectual property "thieves," instead of addressing fact that the entertainment industry as a whole has been blanded down to appeal to the widest denominator so badly that we, as a society, feel absolutely no remorse exploiting it. I.E. we download albums because on a disc of eighteen songs, there MIGHT be five good ones.
To reiterate, this is another lazy industry that would rather waste money trying to force IT'S standards onto it's market, instead of adhering to the basics of economics and, well, give the people what they want.
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"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
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