Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Unfortunately, given the fact that at present piracy is a virtually risk-free activity, we have no way of knowing what the effect of fines would be. I maintain, however, that a fine has to be a significant multiple of the price of the goods obtained in order to be a punishment.
Getting something for free harms:
A) The seller, since a certain proportion of the people who illegally downloaded it (there's no way of knowing what that proportion is, but we can reasonably assume that it's non-zero) would otherwise have legally bought it.
B) The honest purchaser, who is effectively subsidising the freeloader.
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If I download 10,000 books (as easily done as you say it is), would being charged $50 per book, so $500,000 deter me more than being charged $500? One is ruinous, the other is a slap on the wrist that would probably stop me. Charging multiples of the price of a good is only just in the case of one-off downloads, not bulk downloads; and in the case of bulk downloads, you can be reasonably sure that the person wouldn't have purchased much of the material in any event.
And if we can't tell what the effect the fines would be, wouldn't it make sense to start at the low end? Why just "go with our guts", and crank them up to 11? How is justice served by automatically going with a harsh penalty in the absence of evidence that it is effective rather than a low penalty?