Copyright Infringement and Shoplifting Contrasted 562
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's a "government store"? (Score:2, Interesting)
File sharing is not like stealing (Score:2, Interesting)
How about this: (Score:1, Interesting)
Oh, but there's this magic kind of "intellectual property" that's allows people to own ideas. Something absurd on its face. Nevermind that unlike real property, IP "rights" go away after a certain amount of time.
I see nothing wrong with this.. (Score:2, Interesting)
What's the solution? DON'T STEAL/PIRATE MOVIES/BOOKS/SOFTWARE/MUSIC/etc.! It's VERY simple to avoid being caught by these supposedly "unfair" laws!
Re:File sharing is not like stealing (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually copyright holders don't care if you steal their stuff from stores because they still end up getting paid. The store loses, but not the copyright holder.
Re:Easily explanable (Score:4, Interesting)
Not at all: that's the very reason people play the lottery: their chances of winning are nearly naught, but millions play everyday because they reckon the enormous bounty is worth the ridicule odds.
Likewise, that's the reason a big drop was observed [wired.com] at the height of **AA-instigated lawsuits last year: chances of losing at the P2P game (not winning this time
Re:Potential Redistributable Files (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the problem is, if I steal a car from GM's factory, how much have I stolen, the retail or wholesale value of the vehicle?
How about intellectual property, have I stolen the costs that it took to make the CD, or the suggested MSRP? Why does the RIAA assume that the MSRP is what is stolen?
With the GM vehicle, we have a greater chance of market competition causing the price to drop down to the cost of the materials + cost of labor. It's not perfect by any means, and barriers to market entry screw things up, but real competition keeps them more honest than the record companies.
The problem with this logic, is that lack of competition with IP causes the price to be higher than it would be in a market where there is direct competition.(i.e. there is only one Windows, and it's made by microsoft, there is only one Radiohead, and only one record company I can get their CD from). Instead, each band, and product, is it's own monopoly, with no direct competition, which is why price fixing is so easy with music and movies.
So, the record company sets the price as high as it can, and since there is no direct competition, the profit margins stay high. What happens when someone "steals" music? They aren't charged for the costs of making the IP, instead they are stuck with fines that are based on artificially high prices.
I'm not sure if anyone dealing with economics has tried to come up with a way of measuring competition in an industry, but if they haven't, they should. The market distortions created by our IP rules are horribly unjust. Why should someone that makes a small amount of IP be rewarded handsomely, while someone that makes a really existing product, have comparatively low profit margins? Why should someone that steals maybe $100 from the real world profit of a record company, and even less than that from the true value of the good itself(if we assume that the value of the good is only as much as the amount paid to the artists and managers), be charged with millions in fines?
Re:File sharing is not like stealing (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:What's a "government store"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Differences Abound (Score:3, Interesting)
The **AA certainly could do this! In civil court, there is no law against entrapment. The **AA could put their stuff up for download, log the people downloading it, then sue them. And it would be totally legal. And the **AA would win. Ask any lawyer.
Re:How about this: (Score:1, Interesting)
"Copyright and intellectual property are the most important issues now. If you don't have something that assures fair use, then you don't have a free society. If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass...[P]ersonally [I] think intellectual property is an oxymoron. Physical objects have a completely different natural economy than intellectual goods. It's a tricky thing to try to own something that remains in your possession even after you give it to many others."
And to quote Roderick T. Long: ;-)
"modern electronic communications are simply beginning to make copyright laws unenforceable; or at least, unenforceable by any means short of a government takeover of the Internet -- and such a chilling threat to the future of humankind would clearly be a cure far worse than the disease. Copyright laws, in a world where any individual can instantaneously make thousands of copies of a document and send them out all over the planet, are as obsolete as laws against voyeurs and peeping toms would be in a world where everyone had x-ray vision."
Re:Potential Redistributable Files (Score:4, Interesting)
Mathematically impossible to do the right thing (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're an honest person and you don't do the crime, then whatever penalties are irrelevant.
Is it possible to avoid doing the crime? There exists combinatoric evidence that it's next to impossible to create an original melody [slashdot.org].
Re:Potential Redistributable Files (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, go after the big fish, and more big fish will appear to replace them. If there's a demand, someone will find a way to supply it. Period.
In Why Our Drug Laws have Failed and What We Can Do About It [amazon.com], Superior Court Judge James P. Gray quotes a letter from a fellow judge about arresting every drug dealer they could find in one city (Phoenix), to see how quickly the market filled the gap. They bought drugs from every single dealer they could find, and arrested all 76 they found on one night. Can you guess what happened?
Arresting the users won't work. Arresting the dealers won't work either. What's left?
The only rational option is legalization. Without an artificially constricted supply, drugs would no longer be insanely profitable, meaning gangs wouldn't be killing each other over drug distribution territories anymore and dealers wouldn't be trying to get people hooked. With drugs subject to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, manufacturers would have to label their products and say how much of what was in it, meaning accidental overdoses would virtually disappear. Drugs wouldn't have to be smuggled in compact, more addictive form anymore, so we'd go back to having cocaine be an ingredient in soft drinks rather than a powder you snort.
And before you reply that legalization would make more people addicts...
Before the early part of the 20th Century, a 12 year old girl could walk into a general store and walk out with as much heroine, cocaine and morphine as she could carry in one arm and a 12-gauge shotgun in the other. If drug legalization would cause widespread addiction now, why didn't it back then?
Re:I'm not sure thats how it goes. (Score:2, Interesting)
You have a really strange notion of democracy.
When people think something is right, there should not be a law outlawing that thing. If copying and sharing are considered good values, the government should look into facilitating these actions. Instead, the government tries to make them harder. Something's wrong there.
Re:Easily explanable (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think it's so much to do with risk, although that might be what lawmakers tell themselves so they can sleep at night.
The thing is, if you steal a DVD, you steal it from WalMart or Best Buy, not from ABC or Warner Brothers, because the retailer has already purchased it from their supplier, etc.... If you download it, you are stealing it 'directly' from ABC or WB, at least in their eyes. And it's the studios that have the lobbying power, not the retailers.
Re:Easily explanable (Score:3, Interesting)
>the mind of "internet shoplifters" is to up the
>possible penalty.
This doesn't bode well. Me, using a pencil and paper copying a poem from a book I have is next to impossible to find out. The chance of getting cought approchaes zero. So the penalty would approach infinity. At the very least the panlty should start in the billions of dollar.
On the other hand it bodes well for my planned bank robbery. I intend to call the police before hand, not use mask and stare into the cameras and so on. Sure, a huge chance of getting cought, but by your reasoning, the penalty would probably not be more than say $10 or so in fines.
Sounds like a good reasoning to me!