You always here of file "sharers" being sued. What about those downloading a file? Are they sued, too?

The fine seems stupidly high for sharing a pinball game! The penalties/fines are way too stiff! 

By the way, can anyone name some good file sharing sites for me?

http://valoom.com/valoom/Dream-Pinball-3D.vm?page=ProductDetail&productId=94978 <-- So £16,000 for a Game that costs ~$9. 

O_o 

I guess logic isn't their strong point... However, if I go on a murderous rampage, I look forward to the prospect of being sentenced to 4000+ life sentences. "Justice" system FTL.

that people would actually download a Pinball Game per se...

I would like to make a point of information after watching the interview between BBC news and the person representing the software company. He said the money ordered to be paid by the court was not a fine because criminal law was not broken, it was to cover costs. This article brands those who share files as criminals when in fact they are not (yet).

Whilst I think we must all accept that filesharing of copyright material is a civil wrong and should be punished, I think that there should be a detailed and realistic evaluation of damages conducted. 

£16,000 seems to be totally beyond any damage that this user could have actually inflicted on the company. I accept that the damages should be higher - perhaps significantly so than the value of the game, but three orders of magnitude seems too much.

If the logic is based on an evaluation of the total number of users that she sent a few bytes of the game too, then problems clearly ensue. On this logic, if the company were able to successfully sue every single person who pirated the game, they would yield a sum far in excess of the total damage to the company through loss of profits on individual sales, as multiple people upload to the same person etc.

In the UK we have three types of damage available - restitutionary, exemplary and aggravated. The latter types are generally only awarded in limited and specific circumstances. I don't think copyright infringement should be such a circumstance.