Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
That article strikes me as being the equivalent of saying "too many cars are being stolen, so let's say that car theft is no longer a crime".
Let's have all the ISP's monitor traffic for illegal downloads and hand over details of all the criminals to the police, cutting off internet access from the villains. Make people realise that it is NOT "socially acceptable" to obtain such material without paying for it.
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I would say it is no way equivalent.
The critical difference between your example, and what is happening with copyright is that there has never been a point where the general public didn't regard stealing cars as a crime.
That is not an insignificant point. Copyright was originally intended to last fourteen years - not the life of the author. The life of the author plus seventy years is way out.
Authors are not paying enough for copyright privileges to support the cost of this. The legal system as it is is overburdened by the amount of violent crime that goes on. If authors what their extended copyrights somehow enforced it can happen after every single abused child, mugged oldster, beaten spouse, murdered businessman, etc have had their wrongs addressed.
If they want to be in the same line or ahead of these then they need to be paying the
FULL COST of court buildings, bailiffs, public defenders, judges, security, and the whole bail of wax for a parallel system. Copyright fees would likely have to run several thousand dollars a year for each title (whether it is selling or not) to make that happen. I submit to you that this is rapidly becoming the dominant view, and certainly it is childs play to support this against all comers in debate - given the current state of crime in the western world.