It is hard to see how this comment wouldn't be arguing that the RIAA should, if their concerns are bona fide, be suing for millions of dollars instead of single-digit thousands. All the empirical evidence available to you suggests that when the RIAA takes someone to court who refuses to settle, they are likely to be awarded 5- and 6- figure judgements. Set against that fact, it is very hard to argue that they are being malicious when they offer a $5000 settlement.

If you are mugged in the city of Chicago, or if your lawnmower is stolen from your garage, or your house broken into, the chances are very good that the party who harmed you has far fewer resources than you do; in fact, your economic relationship to your assailant is likely to be comparably dramatic to the relationship between the RIAA and a defendant (it is probably more likely that you could start a multimillion dollar business this year than that a mugger will find a stable, successful career ever). And yet our system of law does not then say, "you are so much better off than the person who stole from your house, you should just shake it off". That's because the resources at your disposal do not alter your fundamental rights.

Jammie Thomas-Rasset was sharing 1700 songs, and they asked her for $5000. What do you think would be the ethical amount for them to ask for that many songs?

I think any ethical settlement offer should be for the number of songs that they are hypothetically willing to sue for.

Baffling; your ethical concern is that they did not sue her for more money. "If they were really serious, and not just using the legal system to bully people", you seem to suggest, "they'd set out to ruin her completely and give no quarter until they actually accomplished that".

"Pay a settlement of thousands of dollars, or get sued for dozens of songs", is, as far as I am concerned, demanding a lot of money for few songs.

My ethical concern is that they were deliberately setting out to place people in a situation where the only rational decision is to go with "give us thousands of dollars and do not mount a defense of yourself over a few songs.".

I know, obviously, that you disagree with what I am saying; I am sure I am unable to change that. If you want to continue to pretend not to understand... then knock yourself out. I think what I am saying is pretty simple, however flawed you may find it.

I'm sorry; I literally just don't understand the argument here. If I set your house on fire, incurring $300,000 in damages, and then offer to settle with you for $5,000, your only rational decision is to accept that settlement offer. Am I being unethical if I do that?

If I owned 200 houses around the country, and you burned one down out of carelessness and negligence but without any malicious intent, would it still be unethical for me to offer you the $5,000 settlement?

My understanding is roughly: the settlement amount should be thought of as $n per song that they actually intend to litigate, not $n per song that was available for download, which at least seems like a coherent position to me.

The numbers still seem not particularly unreasonable in that context, but are certainly more than $4/song.

It's frankly bizarre to say "the plaintiff would have been ethical to offer to settle for $90,000, but unethical to offer to settle for $9,000."

This seems to be the entire point of a settlement offer. "I think I could get more out of you, but we can both avoid the court costs if you pay me less than what a court would award me."

I think the argument is "if someone offers to settle for $9000, they lose the right to sue for more than $90,000." Which gets rid of the entire concept of settlement offers, but it's the best I can come up with.

Quite right.