Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
You can't make a simple cost-benefit analysis for fighting crime. If you did, you would decide to leave most criminals alone. Does it pay to go after a thief who stole $200 worth of items from a store? Of course, not. Part of fighting crime is prevention. Make people afraid they will get caught and have to pay often goes a long way.
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The utilitarian in me wants to say that you can and should in fact do a cost-benefit analysis for enforcement. In the case of small theft, I think the argument can be made that the relatively low costs of enforcing that law are far outweighed by the good created by dissuading people from thievery (i.e. the prevention you mention).
With piracy, I think there should be some enforcement, but I think that also needs to be looked at from a cost-benefit perspective to figure out how much and what kind of enforcement. It's too simplistic to say, "it's a crime, so that justifies spending infinity-dollars to stop it." If you're spending $5 chasing after $3, I think something has gone wrong.
As a further complicating factor, laws that prevent piracy can also amount to censorship (e.g. SOPA), so an even more careful balancing needs to take place. There's a lot that could be done with education; new laws shouldn't be the go-to answer without carefully thinking through there costs (both monetary and social).