Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeD
Counterfeiting money or other items DOES have a victim. The person who ends up receiving those goods believing they're real.
There's no point making fake money unless you intend to spend it, moment you do that, you create a victim.
With fake goods, I'm either way on the issue. If you make a fake gucci bag and then sell it on as though it's the real thing, you've created a victim. If you make a fake gucci bag for yourself and never pass it on then imo there isn't a victim.
Copyright infringement should only involve jail time for cases of commercial infringement, by that I mean, selling pirated goods such as DVD/BR/CDs and that should imo include running ads on websites that offer pirated material. Fines (still open to debate how much/how it'd be applied) should be sufficient for everyone else.
It gets a little more grey when it comes to locker storage sites, but if the sites don't promptly follow take-down requests then I think it should apply to their owners too. If they do follow take-downs and take reasonable actions to prevent someone signing up again (e.g not allowing the same address/payment to be used) then I don't think it should. Due to the scale though, the cost of a full blown court case would be reasonable and both sides would at least have the opportunity to show how much or little the owners tried to prevent abuse of their service.
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I would also add that counterfeit money lowers the morale and faith in the country and economic system and has a deeper, more far ranging impact than simply selling some bootleg cds does.