Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
Enough of that tired line, already. That's the lamest excuse since "I'll only stick the tip in."
The point is, when you illegally downloaded the file, you committed copyright infringement, you harmed the creator of that property by depriving him of income, and you should be punished. It's really that simple.
Saying after the fact, "If I'd known a cop was going to be there, I wouldn't have been speeding," doesn't cut the mustard in a court of law. Neither does pleading innocent to a theft because "He had others to sell."
Your making flimsy excuses for plain and simple greed and a total lack of consideration for the producers of the goods you take. (But then, you are a lawyer...)
|
But if I download a file I would never have purchased, how have I "harmed the creator of that property"? If I enjoy the work and tell others about it, who subsequently buy, have I benefited the creator of the property? Maybe they owe me some money in that instance, otherwise they're getting a benefit they didn't pay for.
Just because you've violated a copyright doesn't necessarily mean you've caused harm. I don't like greed either, but I don't think we should try and legislate away greed unless it's actually causing a harm. Conversely, if laws are made that restrict people from legitimate uses of something they bought (e.g. making it illegal to strip DRM from a file, even where the DRM server is gone and there's no other way to use it), then that is causing a harm that we should stamp out.
I'm not saying it should be a complete free-for-all, but I think people need to put copyright into the perspective of how much harm are violators actually causing. Sending people to Siberia or levelling multi-million dollar fines is probably not proportional to the actual harm.