Copyright Infringement and Shoplifting Contrasted

awesomeO4001 wrote in to mention a post to Karl Wagenfuehr's blog where he compares and contrasts the penalties for copyright infringement vs. shoplifting. From the post: "...from what I can tell, the penalties laid out for downloading one season of a TV show with BitTorrent are much harsher than if you actually stole a DVD set of the same show from a government store...For stealing the DVD you could face no more than up to 1 year imprisonment and up to a $100,000 fine; for downloading the same material you could face statutory damages of up to $3,300,000, costs and attorney's fees"

what would be the charge

[testednegative]

... if you downloaded a movie which you own because you stole the dvd from a store :S

but

[Quasar1999]

Can I shoplift from a store in my underwear? I think the extra 3.2 million is a convenience fee for being able to commit crime in my parent's basement...

Re:Differences Abound

[TrippTDF]

I want to see the look on a Best Buy manager's face when he realizes I'm sitting in the corner of his store, burning DVDs on a laptop, and handing them out to people.

Would I get both punishments, then?

Re:but

[jd]

What's a store doing in your underwear?

Bulge?

[Ibag]

"and the silly square bulge in your pants that doesn't look so natural to the cashier"

Its a medical condition, you insensitive clod, and I'll thank you not to stare. This is why I have to spend so much time on the internet downloading...tv shows.

Re:Potential Redistributable Files

[Anonymous Coward]

and while size is a factor, if those are the important parts...

Wait, so size really doesn't matter?

Re:What's a "government store"?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

It's a place where you buy governments. Like the US.

Slow news day

[Quiet_Desperation]

I don't think it's any shocking revelation that our system of justice lacks balance and correlation between crime and punishment.

That being said, would anyone really get hit with those penalties. Maybe this is like the old Mark Twain quote: "In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

I mean, I ran some of my own numbers. I could send a pack of trained, cybernetic attack wolves to kill Ashlee Simpson in the most horrible and bloody manner possible. The most I'd get is life in prison because, obviously, I am not sane. If I were to download her entire masterwork collection of songs and burn them to CDs to sell, I'd be sentenced to a savage prison world circling a neutron star in the Saggitarius arm of the galaxy. Yes, the government would be required to spend, oh, I dunno... thousands of dollars to develop FTL travel, prisoner hauling spacecraft, and hire like TEN people to develop the prison world just to carry out the punishment currently described by copyright law.

Now, they certainly are not going to do that. At least I don't think so. Probably not. Anyway, I have to get back to tuning the synthetic muscles in the wolf legs.

Re:Deterrence factor

[The Rizz]

By that logic, let's compare littering to a bank robbery.

Littering = Very easy to avoid being found out. It's not like people really notice someone drop something on the ground.
Bank robbery = Security cameras, guards, silent alarms, FBI involvement.

So, by your logic, since it's much, much easier to get caught robbing a bank than littering, you should get a much much stiffer penalty when caught throwing a gum wrapper on the ground.

Shall we say a $500 billion fine, and 4000 years in jail? That should keep your d = pc formula balanced...