If You Think The Cost Of 'Piracy' Is High, What About The Cost Of Enforcement?

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

I think that we are close to the end of rampant piracy. When governments crack down and seize assets of big torrent aggregator sites like megaupload, they only have to repeat that a few times to make these sites afraid to operate.

MegaUpload was not a "torrent aggregator." It was a file-hosting service; there are dozens, maybe hundreds of others. It's not very different from a cloud service like Dropbox and Amazon Cloud.

Shutting down one or several of those isn't going to matter, because there's a great need for the service for all types of business & education purposes. Without requiring inspection of every data pack moved through the system, there's no way to establish how much content is legit.

Torrent aggregators are even harder to shut down; the legal case against them is on thinner legal ground, since they're not hosting files at all. They're just a specialized search engine.

For piracy to be rampant no matter the technology (p2p, torrents etc) you need easy to find websites. Eliminate the websites and you will still have piracy but it won't be nearly as widespread.

Ask publishers and music/movie reps if it's okay if only elite geeks know where the filesharing sites are. They've been screaming about Teh Eebils Ov Piracy since all that existed was text-only ebooks and software that would fit on a floppy disc exchanged on warez newsgroups.

Knowing that their level of hysteria has never had anything to do with the actual amount of damage being done to their industries, I don't believe they'll be satisfied to allow that a certain amount of filesharing is worth tolerating in the name of freedom and privacy. (A certain amount of outright theft is worth tolerating in the name of freedom and privacy--we don't require strip-searches of people leaving shops, even though we know that some percentage of those people have stolen something. Enforcement would cause more damage than allowing a certain level of loss, and accepting that doesn't mean condoning the crimes.)

And it is a good thing and worth the expense. It's not just greedy corporations hurt by this.

Musicians, authors, everyone involved in making movies and tv shows, everyone involved in creating games, software engineers are all hurt by piracy.

I, a teacher, am even hurt by piracy. No matter what textbook you choose, the solution manuals are one google search way.

Solution: stop using a book to come up with the problems, and the solutions won't be googleable. (I am aware that's a hideously time-consuming response, and teachers aren't paid enough nor given enough time to do this remotely well. But that's a problem of the education industry, not copyright enforcement.)

It's impossible to assign homework where half of my class doesn't just look up the solutions and not try.

No it's not--if the homework doesn't come out of a published source, they can't look up the answers. The "not-try" crowd will be identifiable. Even better, give them one or two questions from a published source, and the rest make up to look similar at first glance, but be different, so they'll grab the answers they think are right, and will fail on the others.

The same generation that doesn't perceive copying as wrong, has also no problem downloading music, movies, and games without paying.

They also have no problem watching movies on television, listening to a radio station that gives them free music 24/7, playing games on countless websites that offer free games... the concept of "this free stuff is okay, that free stuff is not okay" isn't knowledge people are born with. Recognizing the difference between feedbooks and [redacted]; the vaguaries of copyright law are an *obscure* type of knowledge.

They don't feel the least bit guilty about what they do. Educating that generation is also important. They have no respect for intellectual property.

The general public has *never* had any "respect for intellectual property." Sixty years ago, violating IP law was almost impossible for a single individual who didn't own a company. It took either expensive, specialized machinery or incredible social resources. The closest you could get was performing a town play without licensing the content.

The photocopier changed that. The computer changed it more. And the media industries--including books--have been fighting ever since to re-create the scarcity that protected their business model.

In summary, piracy hurts many people and two steps need to be taken: keep cracking down on big torrent sites and educate the young adults out there.

It starts with educating the would-be crackdown team about the technology involved. Torrent sites are *drastically* different from file-storage sites. Torrents don't stop if you remove the site.

And "educating the young" without lying to them would involve explaining very complex legalities that top lawyers in the industry don't agree on.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

And "educating the young" without lying to them would involve explaining very complex legalities that top lawyers in the industry don't agree on.

There's nothing complex about teaching children that "it's wrong to take stuff without the owner's permission unless you pay for it". This is the basic stuff of ethics; no need to involve the law.

[stonetools]

The general public has *never* had any "respect for intellectual property." Sixty years ago, violating IP law was almost impossible for a single individual who didn't own a company. It took either expensive, specialized machinery or incredible social resources. The closest you could get was performing a town play without licensing the content.

The photocopier changed that. The computer changed it more. And the media industries--including books--have been fighting ever since to re-create the scarcity that protected their business model.

Actually, making unauthorized copies has always been easy since the invention of the printing press, hence the invention of copyright law in the wake of its invention. The solution, as always, has been effective law enforcement-suing the miscreants and tossing the worst ones in the pokey. Knowing the technology is relevant to this end, of course, but merely knowing the various technologies involved doesn't automatically solve the problem.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

The same generation that doesn't perceive copying as wrong, has also no problem downloading music, movies, and games without paying. They don't feel the least bit guilty about what they do. Educating that generation is also important. They have no respect for intellectual property.

That's true, but that generation is grown up now, and will almost certainly be passing their knowledge on to the next generation when that comes along so the time for education to be effective is long gone. While schools can influence young impressionable minds with ideas that are completely contrary to those of their parents for a short while, the parent always wins out in the end. And no child is ever going to refuse to play a game downloaded by its parent on principle just because a teacher says it is wrong.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

That's true, but that generation is grown up now, and will almost certainly be passing their knowledge on to the next generation when that comes along so the time for education to be effective is long gone. While schools can influence young impressionable minds with ideas that are completely contrary to those of their parents for a short while, the parent always wins out in the end. And no child is ever going to refuse to play a game downloaded by its parent on principle just because a teacher says it is wrong.

You appear to be suggesting that the children of criminals are doomed to be criminals themselves. That's a very depressing outlook, and one which I suspect is not borne out by the evidence.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

That's true, but that generation is grown up now, and will almost certainly be passing their knowledge on to the next generation when that comes along so the time for education to be effective is long gone. While schools can influence young impressionable minds with ideas that are completely contrary to those of their parents for a short while, the parent always wins out in the end. And no child is ever going to refuse to play a game downloaded by its parent on principle just because a teacher says it is wrong.

If there is effective law enforcement and people start going to jail for violating the law, that will be all the influence young, impresssionable minds will need.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There's nothing complex about teaching children that "it's wrong to take stuff without the owner's permission unless you pay for it". This is the basic stuff of ethics; no need to involve the law.

Maybe not so basic. Some people believe that the act of posting material on the Web is tacit permission for them to take and use that material.

I had this discussion when whole sections of a Web site I ran were posted elsewhere without attribution--more than once. The argument from the plagiarists was, If I didn't want the information used, why did I post it? They simply did not see what was wrong.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You appear to be suggesting that the children of criminals are doomed to be criminals themselves. That's a very depressing outlook, and one which I suspect is not borne out by the evidence.

They're hardly criminals, and I doubt any of them would see themselves as such. But parents do play a big part in shaping their children's worldview and their future behaviour.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by stonetools

If there is effective law enforcement and people start going to jail for violating the law, that will be all the influence young, impresssionable minds will need.

Bearing in mind two people were recently jailed for 5 years for gang raping an 11 year old girl, what would you say was a suitable sentence for downloading a Harry Potter ebook from a pirate site?

Apart from anything else, have you thought about the logistics of putting 10% of the population in jail? Taxes would need to increase by a massive amount to pay for it. You're talking about £40,000 per year for each prisoner, and that's not including the cost of building all the new prisons you would need to fit them all in. Or the cost of policing the internet and gathering together enough evidence to convince a jury of their guilt.

[miguel1626]

Originally Posted by stonetools

If there is effective law enforcement and people start going to jail for violating the law, that will be all the influence young, impresssionable minds will need.

Wow, jail time for downloading a song?

Or maybe we should send pirates for concentration camps and work them to death. That will teach those young, impressionable minds to never download a song!

Maybe you exaggerated for rhetorical purposes, and if that's the case I apologize in advance. Otherwise, I'll point out the obvious fact that not every violation of every law should result in jail time.

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

But parents do play a big part in shaping their children's worldview and their future behaviour.

Not actually...

[teh603]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There's nothing complex about teaching children that "it's wrong to take stuff without the owner's permission unless you pay for it". This is the basic stuff of ethics; no need to involve the law.

By the same token, however, "ethical" people are less competitive in a laissez-faire capitalist environment. They wouldn't be as likely to choose an option that would cause the suffering of millions that would give them billions or even trillions of dollars in profits, for example. A less ethical capitalist would, and would be seen as the better person for doing so.

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Apart from anything else, have you thought about the logistics of putting 10% of the population in jail? Taxes would need to increase by a massive amount to pay for it. You're talking about £40,000 per year for each prisoner, and that's not including the cost of building all the new prisons you would need to fit them all in. Or the cost of policing the internet and gathering together enough evidence to convince a jury of their guilt.

It'd arguably be easier to create a slave caste using existing mechanisms. College debt would be a good place to start once you run out of criminals. If you've starved the governments to death by requiring them to make ever-increasing payouts while cutting off tax revenue, there won't be anyone to stop you.

Sounds like the premise for an excellent cyberpunk novel.

[Belfaborac]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

have you thought about the logistics of putting 10% of the population in jail?

Isn't 10% awfully conservative? I don't know Britain that well in terms of these things, but I can't see it being that different from Norway - and here I would say we're talking 30% at the absolute minimum. I'd be entirely unsurprised to find it's closer to 50%. That's of course if everyone is included, from those who once downloaded a single song or album, to those maxing out their 50Mbps connections 24/7/365.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You appear to be suggesting that the children of criminals are doomed to be criminals themselves. That's a very depressing outlook, and one which I suspect is not borne out by the evidence.

I agree that children of serious criminals aren't doomed to be serious criminals. But I do expect most children of shoplifters to themselves do some shoplifting, and the children of illicit downloaders to do a little downloading.

Excessive punishments for such common offenses won't work. They will rarely be handed out, and, when they are, it will destroy public support for enforcement. Perhaps this is the reason why the Record Industry Association of America switched away from suing individuals for large amounts to their current plan for warnings and, eventually, internet access slowdowns.

If it was a choice between ruining the futures of millions of teenage downloaders by giving them a criminal record, or disrupting their eduation with jail time, and allowing piracy to continue unabated, I would have to choose the latter. There is a middle ground between jail, or a fine big enough to dent a college fund, and no sanction at all.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by stonetools

If there is effective law enforcement and people start going to jail for violating the law, that will be all the influence young, impresssionable minds will need.

Now lets see here. Download a song or an ebook. Naughty, naughty.

Hmmm, criminal record, 2-5 years gaol. Spend time with those excellent role models that house invade, beat up senior citizens or kick people in the head while they are unconscious on the ground.

Here, home burglary sees a sentence of 2-5 years. Real theft and trespass, not copyright infringement.

What a Simply ludicrous comment to make.

[kennyc]

I'm thinking those that download a song or book are no worse criminals and even less of a criminal than those who intentionally misrepresent themselves and their motives on internet forums. I'm thinking there should be jail time involved.