Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
If you found someone who'd downloaded & used one of your programs without buying it, what penalty would you like them to face? How big a fine, how much jail time?
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No, I don't think anyone should go to jail for downloading copyrighted material. Under most circumstances it's a civil offence, not a criminal one.
What should the penalty be? It should be in line with other such "non-payment" offences, I think. I was on the subway recently, and noticed a sign saying that you'd be fined 50x the price of a ticket if you were found not to have one. That's probably the right order of magnitude for such an offence. Fine a few dozen times the commercial value of the downloaded material. That would be my personal preference.