Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
What alternative would you suggest, given that the site itself lies outside the jurisdiction of the court? This has to be better than going after individual downloaders.
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No, it doesn't. If the individual downloaders are too hard to go after, perhaps the legal structure needs to change. If a crime (or tort) becomes so popular that it's unenforceable, the public may not believe that crime should be illegal.
There have never been enough police or court time to prosecute every fistfight as "assault." Most people don't think every fistfight needs to be prosecuted. Likewise, there are not enough court resources to track and prosecute every unauthorized download as "copyright infringement." And that, apparently, is also fine with most of the public.
It's not fine with a great many large corporations who make their living controlling access to copyrighted materials. However, they're not able to articulate how much damage it causes them--and they're *definitely* not able to articulate how much damage any specific case causes them.
A restaurant next to a bar can say, "when a fight breaks out in that place, I usually lose four tables' worth of customers for the rest of the evening, which costs me (X)." They can reasonably ask for prosecutions of the fights that nobody at the bar minds.
When a college student downloads an album and shares it with four friends... how much money has RCA lost? When someone downloads Game of Thrones Season 1 to bring on their vacation, how much money has been lost? If they'd bought it, that's $35-$45. But if they weren't willing to pay that much and were going to watch something free, what's been lost by their choice being GoT instead of a legitimate freebie?
I'm not saying "it's okay to download because otherwise they'd just grab something else so it's all the same." It's not. But quantifying what's been lost is hard--and the media companies have consistently refused to move forward with research that might approximate those values.
Given the lack of public outrage over this, I can't see a claim that the courts "must" demand that ISPs block the IP addresses. Are the courts really claiming that the majority of internet users are potential criminals?
I suppose not; they're saying that "these sites are only used by criminals, and maybe a few law-abiding citizens whose rights aren't important when the criminal activity is considered." I have no way to judge if that assessment is accurate in the UK.