4 ms·
That would encourage piracy. If you pirate a movie right when it comes out, that's $20 or so, but after a year, it gets closer to $10. So: pirate it now, pay
by PotatoEngineer 15y ago
That would encourage piracy. If you pirate a movie right when it comes out, that's $20 or so, but after a year, it gets closer to $10. So: pirate it now, pay next year's price in the worst case!
- joshAg 15y agono, past year based on the time of infringement, not time of conviction, so if you pirate it June 25, 2011, you pay the cheapest price between June 26th, 2010 and June 25th 2011.
- sliverstorm 15y agoEither way, you're still left with the choice: 1) Pay $20 to see movie 2) Pirate movie and maybe have to pay $20 sometime later. Maybe.
- joshAg 15y agoSure but how is that different from now? aside from the cost of the fine, there really isn't, and I'd argue that the specter of a large fine is having little effect on piracy anyway.
- anigbrowl 15y agoA lot of the time, the size of the fine (or the prison sentence) is a function of the probability of being caught. As an example, let's say the economic gain of a single instance of movie piracy is $25, only 1% of all pirates are caught, and the cost of prosecuting someone is $1,000. So you charge a $250,000 fine, and that gets people's attention. Economists talk about indifference curves in place of regular price curves.
- joshAg 15y agoif that's the case, then are you suggesting the fines should be bigger, since 46% of the population doesn't seem to care about the current fines?
- anigbrowl 15y agoNo, I'm just introducing this to give you an idea of why those bizarrely large fines exist in the first place. The economic theory is that law should incentivize people to act a certain way, and that if the odds of prosecution are low than the deterrent effect has to be made up on the sentencing side instead. I don't really know what the 'right' policy is.