jayeff

$150,000 happens to be the amount that a court may award in statutory damages in the case of copyright infringements where the copyright was registered before the infringement took place. That may be a coincidence, but Mr. Tur is a journalist and quite possibly routinely copyrights his work.

It isn't necessary in such cases to prove any financial loss, nor does he have to prove anything beyond being able to demonstrate that his copyrighted material was used without his permission. In such cases, there is no requirement to prove intent.

Unfortunately DMCA does make it harder to prove culplable copyright infringement than it is offline: mainly thanks to the "safe harbor" provisions that the OSP is required to actually know that the material is infringing and is not aware of information from which the infringing nature of the material is apparent.

It is only a matter of time before the right lawyer meets the right judge and the house of cards will come down. To anyone outside a courtroom it is ludicrous that a business model based entirely on the illegal use of copyrighted material by people who are fully aware that they are exploiting the lack of legal precedent, can be considered to be within the law. Maybe a disgruntled ex-employee will testify or produce incriminating documents: who knows.

The DMCA was only written to accomodate those who legitimately pass along digital data without being aware of its nature. Its sloppy language is the sole reason loopholes exist, and they will be closed eventually, either by the courts or by the legislators themselves.