[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Absolutely not! This is a matter for the justice system.

The issue is not really whether "BRIEN" wants the information; the issue is whether the bookseller can give BRIEN the information. That's the difference between - to use a US example - a landlord voluntarily informing a credit bureau that you have been evicted, and a credit bureau demanding that landlords give them information on all evictions.

The first situation is what it seems we have here (although I haven't looked into the matter more than what I've run across on the Internet) - booksellers are voluntarily giving this info to BRIEN. I don't really see a problem with this. Provided, of course, that there are sufficient due process protections in any subsequent civil action, etc. But the idea that a bookseller couldn't voluntarily use a third party to figure out why a torrent with a given watermark appeared on the internet without using the judicial system strikes me as backwards. (And I'm not sure how the judicial process would really help; noting that you sold a watermarked book to X and only to X, and this book is now available on a download site is more than enough to start an investigation in any legal system I'm familiar with. The idea that an investigator couldn't even talk to X just seems backwards.

Originally Posted by meeera

Well, maybe. I have concerns about it: if you are hacked, or your Dropbox (or whatever offsite backup solution you use) is hacked, bam, all your watermarked books could be released with no way for you to "prove" that it wasn't you.

If dropbox or my offsite backup provider (CrashPlan, which I recommend) were hacked, it would be easy to prove because it would be in the news.

And of course the circumstances of the upload would be relevant to your hacking claim - if all of the books you purchased in the past year appeared on torrent sites in one day, it might support your claim; if all of the books you purchased in the past year appeared on torrent sites within hours of your purchase, a hacking claim is going to be looked at with more skepticism.

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

What would you want to do to the uploader, from the viewpoint of the content creator?

Part of the problem with groups like BREIN is that nothing gets back to the content creator. It's not even clear to me what BREIN is saying that it intends to do with the information.

Yeah, I am curious what happens when BREIN gets the information too; I can imagine reasonable and unreasonable approaches, with a reasonable approach being to contact the purchaser the first time a book appears on a torrent, with no legal followup unless there appears to be a pattern.

There are too many possible unreasonable approaches to list..

[snip]

OK, not several decades, how about: 87 Months in Prison for Copyright Infringement: Fair Sentence or Utter Madness?

[/QUOTE]

I really don't have a problem with that sentence for a case of wide-scale for profit commercial piracy.

Originally Posted by arjaybe

It's not theft because the owner still has it. At best it is the "theft" of potential income, and I doubt that every unauthorized download is a lost sale.

This is the widely believed definition of theft used on the internet, and while it is a common definition of theft, it is not the only one. Several jurisdictions do not require proof of deprivation of the item, but just some part of its value, for theft.

But it's really most analogous to "Theft of Cable Services", which involves, well, stealing cable services without paying for them. This crime has been routinely prosecuted as such over the past 30 years, despite the cable company not being deprived of "The Golden Girls" by people who commit the crime, and without anyone offering the justification that they wouldn't have subscribed to cable anyway because it's too expensive.

(However, it does have its own proof problems, most notably being "I thought/assumed/believed that cable was included in the rent." This isn't a Perry Mason (or even Johnny Cochran) class defense, but in most cases it's sufficiently troublesome that cable companies will just shut it off and not try for a prosecution.

If you're actually caught in the act running a cable from the pole to your house, "I thought cable was included in the rent and they forgot to run the line" doesn't work nearly as well.)

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

You have to ask yourself this: is the IP enforcement something done for economics or a principle of morality?

The anti-piracy propaganda is focused on morality, but enforcing the law costs money. The little guy can make as little as 2-3% of an e-book, and he's the little guy because he doesn't make that many sales. So if he has a $10 book that was pirated 10 times, how much would he get back if these 10 people were caught? If they would have bought his book, he would have made $2-$3. How much is he willing to spend chasing 10 people who cheated him out of $2-$3?

I think you mean 20-30% - but with 10 sales, the number doesn't really matter.

Originally Posted by Katsunami

On the other hand, there are some taxes that are immoral, at least in my view.

If my father dies, I inherit a house. Let's say, I want to move into it, after I inherit it, leaving my current rental house. Could I do that? Probably not, because of the law.

Assume that this house has a worth of €150.000 at the moment I inherit it.

The inheritance tax for parents to children is 10%, to be paid within one year. Therefore, after my father dies, I have to find 15K somewhere, to pay as taxes. If I can't, the house needs to be sold and the taxes must be paid from that money.

Most people in the Netherlands don't have 15K lying around. €150K is a cheap house in a somewhat rural area. A "normal" house in a bigger city can cost up to €300K or more. I have okay savings, above average even, but not enough to just give away 15K and not be bothered by it, let alone 30K or more. I don't know too many people (especially singles) who can just pull that amount of money off the bank and think: "Oh well. Bummer."

What gives the government the right to grab 10% of the worth of a house, on the grounds of the fact that the owner of it is dead, and someone else now gets to be the owner by the wish of the deceased?

I say none. In my view, inheritance tax is immoral and just a money-grabbing law.

If there are no children, and the owner decides to leave his house to a brother, sister, or even other people, I don't even want to *think* about inheritance tax. It can become as high as 40%. And that's AFTER the reduction, around 10 years ago. (Other taxes were increased to compensate, however.)

Basically, it comes down to it that the house has to be sold. There are A LOT of people who can't inherit it because without selling it, the tax would be unaffordable.

IIRC (and it's been a long while since I took comparative law), Dutch inheritance law works the same as inheritance law in most places - there is an exemption amount, and only after that amount is reached does the inheritance tax kick in. It looks like the exemption amount is €600k, which means that you pay no tax on any inheritance up to that amount, and different rates on the amounts above that - it looks like 10% for the next €118k, and 20% on the rest. (There are 30 and 40% rates, but they don't apply to children).

So in your example, the children who inherited a €150k house would owe no inheritance tax. If they inherited a €750k house, they would owe €18.2k in taxes (no taxes on the first €600; 10% on the next €118k (=€11.8k); and 20% on the remaining €32k (=€6.4k). So total inheritance tax on €750k would be €18.2K, or 2.4% of the value.

But I digress.