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Originally Posted by miguel1626
I'd agree with this argument, iff it was possible to determine whether someone would have bought a certain piece of media/software. Otherwise, there'd never be any copyright infringement; one could just claim "I wouldn't have bought it anyway".
That's not to say that I approve of draconian IP-protection laws. I most certainly do not. The DMCA as it stands is already an execrable piece of legislation. |
That's a good point. Individually, it's really hard to say a particular person would have bought something if they hadn't copied it. However, it's not impossible to make good predictions of what groups of people would have done, and determine the harm from that. If we're making laws that affect everyone, we really should be looking at the group level first anyway, even if enforcement is against individuals.
I just think if you make copyright laws that restrict liberty, legislators should be able to (roughly) quantify the harm that infringement is doing and (roughly) quantify the benefits. The default should be to not pass harsher laws unless they reduce harm generally.