Quote:
Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious
Yes, of course. I'd say (but I'm not a lawyer, and I'm open to suggestions) that under my scheme "illegal distribution of a file" can be defined as any form of publication of the file on the internet.
I would like to add reasonable exceptions (such as: if you and I share a Dropbox folder, I can put the file there) but I could not think of one that is not open to abuse :-)
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Thanks for the answer. I think this and not the social DRM aspect is the biggest change from current laws. At the moment you're either allowed to copy or not and law is pretty much agnostic about the method (at least AFAIK). This would need to define and prohibit specific methods, the problem with which is that it would create unforeseen loopholes. There would almost certainly be ways developed that are as convenient and easy as the internet but which avoid the legal definition of "the internet". And as with your Dropbox example you'd have to prohibit cases of exactly the types of sharing you want to encourage just because they use the wrong method.
Anyway I suspect people would ignore the "don't use the internet" clause because once it becomes accepted that copying to friends is ok (for those that don't already think so) then they won't see how it's somehow wrong if they do that via email rather than a memory stick.
It's not that I don't like the underlying goal behind your idea I just think you'd have an uphill battle convincing enough people that it was practical to get the law changed.