The Case of the Downloaded Downer

I stood before the MP3 players at Best Buy, staring blankly at the store display like a kindergartner trying to solve a Sudoku puzzle. After blocking the aisle for an hour, a store clerk with a junior mohawk approached.

“Dude, can I, like, help ya or something?”

Since I didn’t speak his language, I shook my head “no” and he ambled off. But after a few more agonizing minutes, another man approached.

“Hey, Ace, what are you doing here?”

I glanced up to see Benji, a young colleague of mine. Looking more like a surfing god than an independent insurance agent, Benji usually would attract every lady in a 10-mile radius, no matter if she was single, married or my mother. But today he looked a bit crazy, as if he stayed up all night counting acid-washed sheep.

“Hey Benji. My niece told me I should get one of these MP3 players. But I can’t figure out which one to buy. Any advice?”

“None of them, man. They only lead to temptation and insurance nightmares.”

“Benji, what in the Simon Bar Sinister are you talking about?”

“I’m worried about my clients downloading music from the Internet onto their computers.”

“They have the Internet on computers now?” I joked, showing Benji that I was still down with pop culture.

“They also have it on phones, video games…just about every hand-held electronic advice.”

“What? Does that mean the government is watching me when I play my electronic chess game? That explains why I always lose in four moves! What’s your beef with MP3 players?”

“It’s all in the downloading, Ace. Recently a federal court ruled that the illegal downloading of songs by a consumer constituted copyright infringement and awarded damages against her of $22,500 for downloading 30 songs, which comes out at $750 penalty per song.”

“That’s one expensive album.”

“It could have been worse. The defendant had actually downloaded 1,370 songs, and the damages could have potentially been $30,000 per song, totaling $41 million.

“A lot of my clients are either downloading music or other types of files, and it’s possible that they’re downloading these files illegally. Are these lawsuits against consumers covered by a homeowners policy? If not, can coverage be added by endorsement?”

“Benji,” I said, taking one step back from the music players, “The ‘i’ in iPod does not stand for ‘insured.’”

What song was Ace listening to? For help solving this mystery and to check your solution against Ace’s, click here.

Jonathan Hermann (hermannism@gmail.com) is an IA contributing editor.