I'm not going to get into a side political rant here as the topic was piracy, but I will simply clarify my statements, and you may argree or not. Civil courts exist for injured parties to seek relief from agressing parties. Companies that are wronged ought to seek relief in civil courts. What I mean by Crony Capitalists is businesses that rely on the force of governmental action to conduct their business (the banking industry's dependence upon the federal reserve, the airline industry dependence upon the FAA, water gas and power companies dependence upon state-enforced monopolies, etc.) In the case of publishers and recording industries, instead of developing a simple contractual agreement with their customers that they can seek relief with in a civil court, they band together as an industry (monopoly) and throw their money around at lobbyists who manage to buy whatever laws they think they need to support their business model. (CISPA, PIPA, etc. being the latest incarnations.)
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Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
This is an international board. Since the US does little in the way of stopping piracy, you should not have singled out my country for abuse. Compared to France, with its enforced HADOPI law, or the European countries that forbid retail price competition, someone with a screen name like yours should be ecstatic over the US situation.
But since you have brought up the US -- the amount of protection against pirates that US publishers get in return for paying corporate income tax is virtually zero. When it comes to copyright enforcement, books (as opposed to music, software, and movies) are less than an afterthought.
The only significant crony capitalist aspect of US book publishing is with their primary and secondary school textbook divisions. And those are precisely the books which the publishers themselves do mostly create, with the authors listed on the cover sometimes having little to do with the finished product. And the government-publisher cronyism involves the Texas Board of Education more than anyone in Washington.
As for some of your other points, if someone illicitly appropriates my stuff, my injury should not be compounded by a need to prove harm. But if injury is the criteria, shoplifting from chain bookstores should also be defended, since publishers routinely print way more copies than they can sell.
Perhaps you are a pirate, or wish to defend people you care about who pirate. No one is perfect, including me. But please stop this victim-blaming.
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