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Originally Posted by corroonb
No. The correct way is not to pander, mislead or condescend but to explain clearly and unemotionally what copyright infringement is and what it is not, what the costs are and to have a proper discussion about the concept of copyright in a digital era.
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I agree with this. But it goes both ways. You seem to want to have it only one way, and act like illegal downloads are not a problem with actual victims.
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A lot of these problems have arisen because the content distributors simply do not want to reconsider their business model in the light of such massive technological and cultural change. NetFlix and such one charge, unlimited content services are the future of electronic content but the big companies are extremely resistant to applying this simple idea more widely. Digital distribution should be about services not content.
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I disagree with this...mostly. The iTunes music store is about 10 years old, and it's been drm free for about the last 5 years. It's quick and easy to buy a song; you can buy individual songs; they are cheap. But there is still rampant music piracy. Even all-you-can eat subscription models like spotify haven't stopped it. At some point you have to stop blaming the victims and just realize that some people want things for free, and that no business model, no matter how liberal, will stop this.
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Threats and draconian actions will not help.
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I agree that draconian action is not a good idea; I do think that it might actually work. I think that copyright infringement is an actual problem, and I'm tired of the usual blame-the-victim routine. But I don't think it's such a serious problem that we need to break the internet or go all war-on-drugs. But I don't think we should ignore the problem either.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to impose $200,000 in statutory penalties on Jammie Thomas; but it also doesn't make sense to treat her like a hero, either: the $5,000 settlement she turned down would probably have been reasonable.
It's an interesting article, but I don't agree with all of it. It's been *50 years* since the MPC provided that tangible as well as intangible items could be the subject of theft, and it's hard to see that as anything but forward looking.
More to the point, starting at about the same times, many jurisdictions took away the "with intent to permanently deprive" language from theft statutes, replacing it with something like "with intent to deprive the owner of any part of the item's use or value."
You can, of course, debate whether this is a good idea. But in a lot of jurisdictions, copyright infringement does, in fact, meet the definition of theft.