Quote:
Originally Posted by VaporPunk
A Corporations lose money because of pirating.
B Tax-payers always foot the bill for any law-enforcement.
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Incorrect. Many cases are handled in civil courts, not by law enforcement.
Law enforcement often goes after physical counterfeiters, not online piracy. E.g. the US seized a bunch of domains in... 2009? and the overwhelming majority sold knock-off apparel, and only a few were involved in digital IP infringement.
Napster, Limewire and AllOfMP3 were sued by record labels and the RIAA, not by federal prosecutors. When the RIAA went on a tear and sued large numbers of alleged pirates, they were the ones who paid their lawyers and legal fees. Megaupload is an exception rather than a rule.
And of course, fighting bad numbers with equally bad numbers is not impressive. The person who wrote the article cited a
estimate of 4 years of enforcement, which happens to include cybercrime and dealing with physical counterfeiters. The real numbers could even be higher, since that's just one government's expenditures. But you'd also have to balance that out with the value of that IP (which is in the hundreds of billions of dollars) and tax revenues collected from those industries (which probably dwarfs the enforcement costs). But hey, why bother with the facts when you're ranting?
Of course, many people who complain about government antipiracy expenditures were apoplectic when the RIAA actually sued individuals. Government spending is bad; private spending is bad; what is one to think? It should be obvious that the real target is IP laws, not the methods by which they are enforced. As such, while I don't think governments should have unlimited powers to deal with copyright infringement, I don't regard this argument as terribly persuasive.