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Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash
Sneakernet is alive and well these days, and this would be legalizing it by default.
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Yes, but
very small sneakernets :-)
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Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash
Please clarify this - what happens if Mary gets that fine because of Bill, but one of Bill's beneficiaries repopulates the internet supply of Mary's book elsewhere. How does Mary prove that this new supply is from the original "offense" and not another slip-up on her part? There could be a hundred people in possession of Mary's ebook just looking for another safe haven to pirate it again.
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I think this can be managed this way: if you get fined at time X, you get the same treatment of people who report theft of hardware or files at time X, i.e. you cannot be fined again if files that you bought before X are illegally distributed.
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Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash
She screwed up once, and could be dealing with it for years.
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That would be most unfair and will not happen (with the above mechanism).
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Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash
How do you prevent someone from stripping DRM and sharing *that* copy under your system?
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I don't. However, the only person who has a reason to strip the DRM/embedded data from a file is the file buyer, and I don't think that files are usually illegally distributed by the person who paid for them...
Summing up: usually, the buyer will not illegally distribute her/his files, so won't bother to strip the metadata. On the other hand, an illegal distributor who is not the buyer can get the buyer into trouble, so by definition doesn't care if that happens and will not bother to strip the metadata as well.
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Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash
What you're describing falls under first-sale doctrine.
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Is this doctrine applicable also to files, which can be infinitely copied for free? However, my comments about this issue were hasty and not well thought out (I, too, set timers to myself :-) ), so feel free to reduce them to pieces (or, better still, to ignore them completely and go on with the main discussion)!