4 ms·

UK’s proposed 10-year max jail term for file sharing

10 points by teh_klev 11y ago

pluma 11y ago
The problem with these obviously absurd punishments is that they are a result of conflating piracy and piracy-related crimes. There's a difference between a regular individual illegally sharing a file in private and a for-profit organisation doing the same. For most crimes the motive is a huge factor in the severity of the punishment, the intellectual property utilisation industry desperately tries to prevent that kind of nuance from being applied to IP violations. Even if you buy into the "file sharing is theft" mantra, the lack of proportion should be obvious: you don't punish casual shoplifters the same as career criminals who turn a profit on stolen goods. Justice should be blind, no doubt, but context and motives matter. Cutting a decade out of someone's life for privately hoarding data[0] is absurd. That said, punishments are only reasonable if they are in proportion to the damage (financial, but also social or mental) caused by the crime. The reason most ordinary people consider piracy a trivial offense is that the damages claimed by the industry have barely any basis in reality -- although what damages would be realistic is difficult to say because any research into the non-adverse effects of file sharing tends to be shot down. I agree that piracy should be illegal. I just disagree on what should be considered piracy and to what extent it should be punished. Jaywalking and fare-dodging are illegal, too, but there are very few occasions in which they could result in punishments that would ruin someone financially (or socially in the case of jail terms). [0]: An addendum: I prefer to distinguish between "normal" piracy (e.g. downloading the new Hollywood blockbuster) and hoarding (e.g. downloading every Hollywood blockbuster of the past decade including films you're not even interested in watching just for sake of completion). Hoarding isn't new (although the Internet makes it a lot easier compared to cassette and VHS recorders or stacks of CD-Rs) and I think it's better to consider it as a mental health issue rather than simply a "more extreme" (and thus more criminal) form of piracy. My personal experience is that most hoarders in fact also spend more money on legal media (e.g. cinema tickets, blu-rays or music albums) -- which is of course considered less of a problem because it's legal, although it's as much of a symptom as their piracy.
- teh_klev 11y ago
  >My personal experience is that most hoarders in fact also spend more money on legal media I was a self-confessed hoarder, and you're right, I also spend plenty of my hard earned on legal media and online streaming services (Netflix, NowTV, Amazon Prime including rentals). These days I'm less inclined to torrent/giganews TV series because they're mostly available online. If the studios make their content available through legal streaming then people will pay for it, I'm a perfect example of this. The cynic in me is now waiting for our government to try and find a terror angle to throw at private individuals freeloading for personal use.

10 points by teh_klev 11y ago

pluma 11y ago

The problem with these obviously absurd punishments is that they are a result of conflating piracy and piracy-related crimes. There's a difference between a regular individual illegally sharing a file in private and a for-profit organisation doing the same. For most crimes the motive is a huge factor in the severity of the punishment, the intellectual property utilisation industry desperately tries to prevent that kind of nuance from being applied to IP violations. Even if you buy into the "file sharing is theft" mantra, the lack of proportion should be obvious: you don't punish casual shoplifters the same as career criminals who turn a profit on stolen goods. Justice should be blind, no doubt, but context and motives matter. Cutting a decade out of someone's life for privately hoarding data[0] is absurd. That said, punishments are only reasonable if they are in proportion to the damage (financial, but also social or mental) caused by the crime. The reason most ordinary people consider piracy a trivial offense is that the damages claimed by the industry have barely any basis in reality -- although what damages would be realistic is difficult to say because any research into the non-adverse effects of file sharing tends to be shot down. I agree that piracy should be illegal. I just disagree on what should be considered piracy and to what extent it should be punished. Jaywalking and fare-dodging are illegal, too, but there are very few occasions in which they could result in punishments that would ruin someone financially (or socially in the case of jail terms). [0]: An addendum: I prefer to distinguish between "normal" piracy (e.g. downloading the new Hollywood blockbuster) and hoarding (e.g. downloading every Hollywood blockbuster of the past decade including films you're not even interested in watching just for sake of completion). Hoarding isn't new (although the Internet makes it a lot easier compared to cassette and VHS recorders or stacks of CD-Rs) and I think it's better to consider it as a mental health issue rather than simply a "more extreme" (and thus more criminal) form of piracy. My personal experience is that most hoarders in fact also spend more money on legal media (e.g. cinema tickets, blu-rays or music albums) -- which is of course considered less of a problem because it's legal, although it's as much of a symptom as their piracy.

teh_klev 11y ago
>My personal experience is that most hoarders in fact also spend more money on legal media I was a self-confessed hoarder, and you're right, I also spend plenty of my hard earned on legal media and online streaming services (Netflix, NowTV, Amazon Prime including rentals). These days I'm less inclined to torrent/giganews TV series because they're mostly available online. If the studios make their content available through legal streaming then people will pay for it, I'm a perfect example of this. The cynic in me is now waiting for our government to try and find a terror angle to throw at private individuals freeloading for personal use.