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You're free to ask your congressmen to change the copyright laws. Until then, they should be enforced: Having some manager deprioritize certain crimes because h

You're free to ask your congressmen to change the copyright laws. Until then, they should be enforced: Having some manager deprioritize certain crimes because he thinks they're too expensive to enforce moves power from the legislative to the executive. You didn't directly make this distinction, but your point about preferring to allocate tax dollars to physical crimes would be a strange way to view changing the law.

jerrac 10y ago
Deciding how to enforce and execute the law is the job of the Executive branch. That, by necessity, requires prioritizing. The only exception is if the law actually prioritizes itself. If we the people don't like how the law is executed, we can try to get the Legislature to pass a law that forces the Executive branch to do it our way. Or we can elect a President or Governor who agrees with us.
redblacktree 10y ago
Enforcement priorities are never equal. There are a lot of laws still on the books that no one cares about, so they haven't bothered to repeal them. It's naive to think that all laws are always enforced equally all the time. It's an impossible ideal.
bduerst 10y ago
What a strange, strange straw man to knock down, especially since they were just asking for more data and explaining why they were curious.
ionised 10y ago
Your congressman is most likely accepting large sums of money from companies supporting these draconian laws. Sums you can never hope to compete with. So break these laws. Break them as much as is possible. Convince others to do the same. Civil disobedience is the engine of progress.
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  If you have a concrete example of this occurring, then consider whether it's bribery: 18 U.S. Code § 201 - Bribery of public officials and witnesses "directly or indirectly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official, for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official; or being a public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official, otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge of official duty, directly or indirectly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such official or person; " My understanding is that prosecutors would be heavily incentivized to find an underground bribery operation on Congressmen; it would be a career-making move, and they could make press releases to everyone. People clearly care about corruption and bribery, as evidenced by this election cycle. The commenters in this subthread have already agreed that it is good to give prosecutors extensive leeway in prosecuting crimes, or even deciding whether something is a crime. And in this particular case, the incentives line up. So it seems unlikely that congressmen are engaging in outright bribery, with the prosecutors letting them get away with it. Again, if you know something that the prosecutors don't, you can contact your state Attorney General to report a crime. They would probably at least open up an investigation. For example, it looks like 5 Congressmen have been prosecuted over the last year alone, so they're hardly immune to the law: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/dem-congressman-convicted-federal-corruption-charges http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/dem-congressman-conv... Additionally, the FCPA makes it a crime for US companies to bribe foreign officials(such as in the Ukraine, where this article's criminal seems to be based). I've had to sit through 3-4 of these anti-corruption seminars, and it sure seems like another law that prosecutors would love to follow up on. My guess is that the lobbyists are simply more persuasive, and seem to care about the law a lot more than the other types of people who comment on the law.
  - ionised 10y ago
    Lobbying is what I was referring to, and it basically is bribery legalised. You cannot hope to compete with lobbysists from Disney, the MPAA/RIAA etc. It's heavily skewed in their favour.

jerrac 10y ago

Deciding how to enforce and execute the law is the job of the Executive branch. That, by necessity, requires prioritizing. The only exception is if the law actually prioritizes itself. If we the people don't like how the law is executed, we can try to get the Legislature to pass a law that forces the Executive branch to do it our way. Or we can elect a President or Governor who agrees with us.

redblacktree 10y ago

Enforcement priorities are never equal. There are a lot of laws still on the books that no one cares about, so they haven't bothered to repeal them. It's naive to think that all laws are always enforced equally all the time. It's an impossible ideal.

bduerst 10y ago

What a strange, strange straw man to knock down, especially since they were just asking for more data and explaining why they were curious.

ionised 10y ago

Your congressman is most likely accepting large sums of money from companies supporting these draconian laws. Sums you can never hope to compete with. So break these laws. Break them as much as is possible. Convince others to do the same. Civil disobedience is the engine of progress.

MichaelBurge 10y ago
If you have a concrete example of this occurring, then consider whether it's bribery: 18 U.S. Code § 201 - Bribery of public officials and witnesses "directly or indirectly gives, offers, or promises anything of value to any public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official, for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official; or being a public official, former public official, or person selected to be a public official, otherwise than as provided by law for the proper discharge of official duty, directly or indirectly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally for or because of any official act performed or to be performed by such official or person; " My understanding is that prosecutors would be heavily incentivized to find an underground bribery operation on Congressmen; it would be a career-making move, and they could make press releases to everyone. People clearly care about corruption and bribery, as evidenced by this election cycle. The commenters in this subthread have already agreed that it is good to give prosecutors extensive leeway in prosecuting crimes, or even deciding whether something is a crime. And in this particular case, the incentives line up. So it seems unlikely that congressmen are engaging in outright bribery, with the prosecutors letting them get away with it. Again, if you know something that the prosecutors don't, you can contact your state Attorney General to report a crime. They would probably at least open up an investigation. For example, it looks like 5 Congressmen have been prosecuted over the last year alone, so they're hardly immune to the law: http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/dem-congressman-convicted-federal-corruption-charges http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/dem-congressman-conv... Additionally, the FCPA makes it a crime for US companies to bribe foreign officials(such as in the Ukraine, where this article's criminal seems to be based). I've had to sit through 3-4 of these anti-corruption seminars, and it sure seems like another law that prosecutors would love to follow up on. My guess is that the lobbyists are simply more persuasive, and seem to care about the law a lot more than the other types of people who comment on the law.
- ionised 10y ago
  Lobbying is what I was referring to, and it basically is bribery legalised. You cannot hope to compete with lobbysists from Disney, the MPAA/RIAA etc. It's heavily skewed in their favour.