Research Shows "Three Strikes" Anti-piracy Laws Don't Work 133
Bismillah writes "Graduated response regimes that warn and then penalize users for infringing file sharing do not appear to work, new research from Monash University in Australia has found. The paper studied 'three strikes' laws (abstract, freely downloadable as a PDF from there) in France, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan and the UK, as well as other anti-filesharing regimes in the U.S. and Ireland, but found scant evidence that they're effective."
Re:Three Strikes Laws (Score:5, Interesting)
It goes further than that. Even without the three-strikes laws, no one takes copyright law very seriously, for several reasons:
Interesting data (Score:5, Interesting)
France: 2million strike ones, 200,000 strike twos, and 710 strike threes, of which only 4 actually went to trial (only one had internet suspended, and only for 15 days).
New Zealand: A lot of data is missing, but so far there have been 13 final cases (with fines of $100NZ per song, maxing out at $600).
South Korea: 500,000 notices issued, of which 99% resulted in suspension of some kind of service (not internet service, but other services such as file hosting accounts).
Taiwan: No enforcement seems to have happened at all.
United Kingdom: Still not in effect, coming soon.
Ireland: 100 customers lost access for a week (cut off by a private agreement with an ISP, not the law), and 4 are close to getting it cut off completely.
United States: (once again, from private agreements with ISPs, not the law) no public data is available.
Re:Three Strikes Laws (Score:5, Interesting)
The chance of getting caught pirating anything is statistically insignificant.
Well, that's why they're going for automated systems, alerts, etc., crammed down the ISPs throats with the promise of reducing business costs by lowering the amount of bandwidth. Comcast, Time Warner, etc., in the US fell in line, and their counterparts in Europe are doing the same. They can only prosecute a tiny fraction; Which is why they have to rely on fear. If you're caught, $100,000 fines, years in prison, etc. -- overkill so massive it'll scare the population into quitting.
Unfortunately for them, this tactic isn't working very well. And the technology is not really effective either. For example, I regularly download the newest movies, which are well-known to be the most watched and hit by automated systems. The only thing I've done to defeat this... is to enable encryption.
There will always be a way around it. They'll keep upping the odds. Soon it'll be one strike. Then it'll be no strike. Then it'll be just talking about piracy.
I call BS on this ridiculous "study" (Score:5, Interesting)
I downloaded the PDF and actually read some of it. It is not a statistical-based "study". It is an advocacy piece studded with high-falutin legalese to make it sound more weighty.
It was written by a lawyer who opposed the anti-piracy laws from the get go, and wrote a briefing to advocate her case in the typical adverserial fashion. Here's an example: to demonstrate that the "three strikes" law didn't work in France, the author notes that while millions of first infringement notices had been sent out by copyright holders, very few third infringement notices were sent, and even the number of first infringement notices had declined sharply after three years. The author implies that these facts convincingly demonstrate that the law was a failure! I'm glad she pointed that out, because naively I might have looked at those facts as evidence that the law was a big success!
But then, I'm not a "Senior Visiting Scholar, U.C. Berkeley School of Law, 2013; Faculty member, Monash University Law School; member, Monash Commercial Law Group. It took a global village to help raise this paper." (end quote) Wow. Excuse me.
Think about any controversial issue with economic implications - immigration reform, climate change, the Keystone pipeline, educational subsidies, health care reform. Anybody with a college degree and a lot of time on their hands could assemble a "study" as convincing as this one that would confirm the correctness of their opinion while trashing the other side. That's what this one is.