Thirty-six year old Sasha Dimititijevic will always remember being pulled over by Wagga patrol officers last January on the Hume Highway in Australia. The officers noticed stacks of pirated CDs in his car and arrested him on the spot. The speeding ticket turned into six counts each of manufacturing and possession of pirated music.Dimititijevic later admitted to receiving the music from his parents in Serbia and that he had not paid royalties on the burned CDs. After pleading not guilty to the initial charges, believing that Serbian composers were not protected by Australian copyright laws, this notion was refuted by the Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), claiming that Serbian artists were indeed covered. Wagga magistrate Geoff Hiatt then handed Dimititijevic a $12,000 fine, a fraction of the severest penalty for copyright infringements in Australia: up to $60,500 and five years imprisonment for individuals, and nearly five times that, $302,500 for corporations.
