Quote:
Originally Posted by CyGuy
The argument is even more fundamental than that: A file that is located within the confines of your own home that is being used personally is beyond the scope of an outsider to manage, this is where the Swiss got it right.
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Laws against it are pretty much impossible to enforce in any meaningful way. You could sue people for more money than Greece owes, or lock people up for 50 years as an example, but that won't affect what everyone else does. If something is there for the taking, people will take it.
The problem (assuming there is one) is with the uploaders. That is what Switzerland has got right. Though I suspect it is more about saving money than anything else. Monitoring, detecting and prosecuting unauthorised downloading won't be cheap, and it's unlikely the corporations who (might) benefit from it certainly won't want to pay those costs.
In other countries it will be consumers who pick up the cost, in higher internet access fees for the monitoring and detection costs, and extra taxes to pay for the prosecutions. That's all extra money that will eat away at their entertainment budget so they will be buying less legitimate content.
Even then it won't make any difference to the level of piracy. Some people will probably go back to buying pirate CDRs from local markets like they used to before, but most will just pay for services that protect them from snooping.