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Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious
Yes, drastically lowering the amount of the fine seems necessary to me. Nowadays fines are set at horribly high values because everyone knows that the probabilitiy of being caught at illegally uploading files it's almost negligible. So the thing that publishers are trying to do is terrorize people into submission, which requires suitably terrorizing punishments. Such high fines have (only) a symbolic value, and publishers know that perfectly well.
With my "social DRM" scheme, getting a fine for illegal distribution is not impossible (if you share carelessly), so the fine does not need a symbolic value. It gets back to the original function of fines: a warning, just as a traffic ticket. So the amount of the fine can be set at reasonable value.
By the way, publishers will be the first to want reasonably low values, otherwise people will start stripping metadata from files "just in case".
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The biggest thing is you're wanting to change it from a civil to a criminal case. Things are done in completely different courts, with different regulations. That is a major reason why content owners would fight your proposed scheme. As it stands, content owners sued infringers, presented their case, defendant could settle out of court or let the jury decide. If the jury decided the defendant was guilty they would establish the amount of restitution, up to the allowed maximum. The plaintiff would get any money they were awarded. Under your proposal, due to existing laws it would have to be a criminal misdemeanor, at which point any money from the fine would go to the government and not the content owners. Oh plus, you would also force it so civil action is not possible. For criminal offenses with a victim, the victim is allowed to sue civilly. You would have to make the argument that it is a victimless crime akin to non collision traffic offenses, or specifically state the victim is not allowed restitution which is legally dubious and would likely be thrown out (as potentially unconstitutional).
Quote:
Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious
Writing successful computer viruses or setting up botnets requires a high level of technical skills, time, and money. I don't think that someone will be interested in doing such things (and risking criminal prosecution) just to copy media files and then upload them for free on the internet.
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To create one from scratch. But most people who use botnets DO NOT do that. You have a handful of people create the viruses, and then rent the botnets to others to do with what ever they want. And yes, stealing info from infected computers is extremely common. How else do you think the Russian Mafia has millions of stolen credit cards to sell on the black market? You're also totally neglecting the script kiddies that use the tools already made tools to screw with people.