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Copyright Infringement and Shoplifting Contrasted
awesomeO4001 wrote in to mention a post to Karl Wagenfuehr's blog where he compares and contrasts the penalties for copyright infringement vs. shoplifting. From the post: "...from what I can tell, the penalties laid out for downloading one season of a TV show with BitTorrent are much harsher than if you actually stole a DVD set of the same show from a government store...For stealing the DVD you could face no more than up to 1 year imprisonment and up to a $100,000 fine; for downloading the same material you could face statutory damages of up to $3,300,000, costs and attorney's fees"
Maybe downloading a movie means you own a P2P-friendly file to redistribute it in the future, while stealing a DVD means you're only going to watch it at home.
Obviously owning a physical DVD also allows you to turn it into P2P-friendly files, but that can't be fined yet since it hasn't happened, while the downloader already possesses the file.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
And you figure, because the tangible good is pressed, not burned or stored in a HDD, it'll last a lot longer...
All this article does is show how unequal punishments are in the Western judicial system.
When you are downloading the movie via BitTorrent you are also farming it out to multiple other clients. So the anology is more like going into Best Buy with your DVD-burning laptop, sitting there and making copies and handing them to customers, then leaving with your own copy.
What's a "government store"?
... if you downloaded a movie which you own because you stole the dvd from a store :S
If you are using P2P software, you are not only downloading, but also uploading, which helps other users infrginge the copyright too. This is far more worrying to the copyright holders than one person stealing one copy. Also it is much easier to get away with downloading so a harsher penalty acts as more of a deterrent.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
For stealing the DVD you could face no more than up to 1 year imprisonment and up to a $100,000 fine; for downloading the same material you could face statutory damages of up to $3,300,000, costs and attorney's fees
.torrent link?).
It's a question of risk: if you shoplift, you face a much higher chance of getting caught, thanks to CCTV, security guards at the exit, and the silly square bulge in your pants that doesn't look so natural to the cashier. If you download a movie, there isn't remotely as much risk (remember the last time you had an adrenalin rush when clicking on a
So therefore, the only way to instill fear in the mind of "internet shoplifters" is to up the possible penalty.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
My understanding of the situation is that the statutory damages are only available if the file was available for other people to download from you (and it is therefore assumed that they did).
They're not just damages for a single instance of copying, but also for the contribution you made to those other people downloading from you.
1 year in jail and up to a $100,000 fine.
or no jail time and up to a $3 million fine.
I dunno... I think the latter is still a "lesser" punishment as the judge will probably still put the fine at about $100,000 depending upon the # of downloads.
Can I shoplift from a store in my underwear? I think the extra 3.2 million is a convenience fee for being able to commit crime in my parent's basement...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
the penalties are commensurate with the impact they want to make in the media.
If you publish a story about a guy who got caught shoplifting, nobody's going to care.
However, make a big splash about a 12 year old girl or a 80+ year old grand-mother and their dog being sued into oblivion, and the story gets everybody going "WTF".
They're obviously going for the shock-therapy/re-education treatment of the masses.
More proof that the entertainment industry has Congress in its pocket.
I'd love to see the RIAA and MPAA prosecuted under the RICO statute. (Wishful thininking, I know.)
While I agree the punishment seems harsh in contrast to petty crime (stealing), I think the biggest difference is the ability to do that makes the difference.
It takes a different type of motivation to go into a store and steal a DVD. It's much more offical physically stealing something. We've been taught that this is a crime and there are reprecussions.
Whereas with access to a computer, the only person to guilt you is uh...no one? With no one else in your room, no shop keeper, a vague moral lesson going around, it's a lot easier to justify.
A lawmakers response is the only one they know. To ratchet up the punishment and cross their fingers it'll solve the problem.
-Teiresias
It doesn't matter how the video was recorded, it's still illegal to distribute it over the internet. If you record it yourself, that's perfectly fine. Downloading it from others is not.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
Shopplifting: not a threat to said corporations.
P2P social revolution: threat.
From that perspective, its quite easy to see WHY the penalties are set up the way they are.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Shoplifting of an item under 500 bucks is a class A misdemeanor governed typically by state statutory code unless it occurs on federal land. Range of punishment is in most states up to 1 year in the county jail and up to a measely 1,000 fine. Restitution can be assessed for the amount of actual loss. When the value of the item taken exceeds 500 dollars it becomes a C felony and the range of punishment bumps up to 7 years and a 5,000 fine, plus restitution for the actual harm. Just my two cents as prosecutor.
This is just more evidence of the irrationality of copyright law, and particularly the DMCA. Copyright law is, at its roots, defined to create an artificial scarcity so people will continue producing creative works. I know this has been said to death, but no one seems to be listening: if copyright law is no longer serving its purpose (it isn't) then it should be done away with.
The cost of duplication of copyrighted goods, particularly in digital form, is trivial. Accordingly, it's a much bigger threat to the legitimate owners than is theft of physical objects, and is punished accordingly.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
"and the silly square bulge in your pants that doesn't look so natural to the cashier"
Its a medical condition, you insensitive clod, and I'll thank you not to stare. This is why I have to spend so much time on the internet downloading...tv shows.
Well, suppose you get a letter stating you have downloaded copyright material and you are being sued to the tune of $$$.
Would it not be cheaper just to run over to the local Walmart and purchase all the stuff that was downloaded? Buying real copies from Walmart to prove prior ownership has got to be way cheaper than paying the fine/legal charges/etc.
This way, you can say that you actually have the copies and you were downloading mp3s, dvds to have backups and different formats.
Live forever, or die trying.
hm
i may just be picking at semantics, but this is slashdot...
but where can I find the list of approved words?
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
Compare...selling me low-quality cheesy ringer towns of songs I already own at twice the cost of the actual CD cost.
Then don't give me a license. And tell me that I'm SOL when my phone dies.
Then explain to me why i should give a crap about copyrights and theivery?
This is based on somebody's little rant in a personal blog? Wake me up when CNN actually publishes anything that even remotely resembles introspection on copyright laws. Better yet, write these screeds to congressfolk, not to kitty14@aol readers. The world won't change just because people are bickering around in blogs.
[
Nobody has intellectual property "rights". They have intellectual property privileges.
In the U.S. at least personal property rights-- you know, for "real" property-- are assumed to be a simple basic intrinsic right that exists outside of and regardless of the government, as codified by the fifth amendment's explicit observation that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.
The execution and distribution rights to the non-property that go by the misnomer "intellectual property rights" are not intrinsic and in fact are granted by the government. This is a big deal. Unlike the intrinsic rights spoken of in the bill of rights-- which are not granted by the government and therefore cannot be limited or taken away by the government-- "IP" ownership is a privilege the government entrusts to certain people with the goal of benefiting the public, as part of Congress's empowerment "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries".
Just something to think about.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Who cares what the penalties are?
If you're an honest person and you don't do the crime, then whatever penalties are irrelevant. I think the real problem is that people are being tried, convicted and punished without due process. The RIAA is wielding power like the IRS, but they are NOT a judicial body or a government agency. As us chessplayers like to say," the threat can be more effective than the execution..." Many people are forced to settle out of court, and more than a few innocent people have been harrassed. In a democracy this shouldn't happen. So the real problem with the overblown penalties is that the threat of such draconian penalties leads to extortion by the RIAA. The penalties don't work that well as a deterrent, millions are still downloading copyrighted material, but they do give the RIAA leverage to pressure money out of people without having to actually prove their case in a court of law.
Punishments aren't meted out to fit crimes, they are created to compensate for enforceability. It is MUCH easier to enforce shoplifting at a retail store than it is to enforce filesharing copyrights.
The idea behind this is that while punishments are low for shoplifting, the chance of getting caught is high. In the filesharing situation, the chance of getting caught is low, so they try and jack up the punishment to make it that more serious if you do get caught.
Also, it is interesting to note ownership of property at time of theft for these crimes, as a comparison. In shoplifting, the retail chain has paid a distributor, record label, or movie production firm for the merchandise. The theft of a product still benefits those distributors. However the theft of a movie before a retail establishment purchases it means it hits the bottom line of the distributor directly. Personally, I bet the distributors couldn't give a rat's ass whether you shoplifted, since that copy was already paid for, and now the retail store has to buy another copy to replace the one you stole.
But copyright-infringement means that demand for the items on the shelf don't change. IE the retailer doesn't need to reorder another copy to fill the empty shelf.
PS don't take my observation as a support for copyright-infringement. I don't believe it to be right.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Really, this is no different from marijuana. Just about every state has a harsher penalty for growing / dealing then they do for posession for personal use.
Fair? Maybe, but that not the point.
Committing the crime is one thing. Helping others to do it is considerably more outrageous to the law.
So in the mean time I'm going to amsterdam, who's with?
-- (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Take the case of a small station or cable company retransmitting or "time-shifting" a show (that has already aired a gazillion times before) e.g. in one isolated breach of 17 U.S.C. 111, 501 et seq. - the law itself suggests that the award of damages (if anyone bothered to go to court over the issue at all) would be fairly minimal, and criminal prosecution highly unlikely, given the fact that an umpteenth re-broadcast watched by a few hundred viewers is of almost negligible impact on the rightholder.
On the other hand, demanding entirely overblown surveillance, censorship, damages and punishment, just for going after alleged one-time infringers sometimes not far from the borderline of fair use (excerpts on fan pages being taken down "at lawyerpoint" etc.), and even if the "suspects" happen to be minors, or 83 years old (let alone...deceased!), seems to appear perfectly adequate to many people if one sticks a label like "pirates" on such "bad" guys to mislead observers into believing someone else had actually been disposessed of an irreplacable piece of physical property merely by copying (part of) it.
IIRC there used to be something they called the First Amendment...
18 USC 641 which it cites as an example to be used for application in a shoplifting casing couldn't apply to almost any situation.
Which government stoare have you been to that sells DVD's?
Also, very importantly, the intent of the law is to help differntiate between different crimes.
If I were to shoplift a fur coat or nice cell phone no copyrigh law could obviously apply in this case. But on the other hand I could shoplift a DVD or computer software and then go further and help pirate it: now I've broken more than one law, obviously. First, I have stolen from the merchant and his or her harm is limited to the $20 in retail sales lost. But my piracy activity takes on another crime in another form: criminal copyright activity.
I think the difference isn't neccesarily the same. If I were an author, publish, programmer I would want me original creative work to be more protected than just one copy that got the "five finger discount." I would see the greater danger to my business, my property, and livelihood in the rampant privacy not in the occassional theft. That's why the crimes are differentiated. Also, the harm to society is worse if on a grand scale my copyright is abused and damanged then if one merchants single copy is lifted.
Shoplifting isn't a violation of Federal law in any case.
Virginia
18.2-96. Petit larceny defined; how punished.
Any person who:
1. Commits larceny from the person of another of money or other thing of value of less than $5, or
2. Commits simple larceny not from the person of another of goods and chattels of the value of less than $200, except as provided in subdivision (iii) of 18.2-95, shall be deemed guilty of petit larceny, which shall be punishable as a Class 1 misdemeanor.
(Code 1950, 18.1-101; 1960, c. 358; 1966, c. 247; 1975, cc. 14, 15; 1980, c. 175; 1992, c. 822.)
And in Virginia:
(a) For Class 1 misdemeanors, confinement in jail for not more than twelve months and a fine of not more than $2,500, either or both.
IANAL, but if I sell you stolen goods, then that is a crime. Likewise, if you could reasonably be expected to know the goods were stolen, then that is also a crime (theft by receiving, IIRC).
As for your last paragraph, that's a mighty big if. However, if that were true (in general, not specifically for Wal Mart), then one would indeed expect that the fine should be greater than $1M. The idea is to make the expected value of the crime negative. As any good mathematician could tell you expected value is the sum of the (product of the probability of an outcome by the value of an outcome), summed over all outcomes.
In your example, let's imagine that $100 is stolen by 50,000 shoplifters, yielding that $5M figure. The probability of getting caught is therefore quite low, specifically, 0.0001. So, if every shoplifter were fined $1M, then the expected value of shoplifting would be (0.9999) * 100 + (0.0001) * (-1,000,000) = $99.99 - $100 = -$0.01. So $1M is probably not enough of a fine.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
If you shoplift a movie, the store pays for it. The store already bought the movie from a distributor, so the MPAA already has their cut of the pie and they don't care what happens to it. If you download a movie, the MPAA doesn't get the revenue that it feels it deserves.
While the net cost to society is probably about the same either way, people get punished more if they steal from organizations with large legal budgets.
That being said, would anyone really get hit with those penalties. Maybe this is like the old Mark Twain quote: "In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
I mean, I ran some of my own numbers. I could send a pack of trained, cybernetic attack wolves to kill Ashlee Simpson in the most horrible and bloody manner possible. The most I'd get is life in prison because, obviously, I am not sane. If I were to download her entire masterwork collection of songs and burn them to CDs to sell, I'd be sentenced to a savage prison world circling a neutron star in the Saggitarius arm of the galaxy. Yes, the government would be required to spend, oh, I dunno... thousands of dollars to develop FTL travel, prisoner hauling spacecraft, and hire like TEN people to develop the prison world just to carry out the punishment currently described by copyright law.
Now, they certainly are not going to do that. At least I don't think so. Probably not. Anyway, I have to get back to tuning the synthetic muscles in the wolf legs.
or listen to their crap. Fair use is immaterial. If they could they'd wire your ears and eyes up directly to a meter and change you for every second of your life.
As it is, its hard enough to get away from the ads, promos and all the other schlock.
I'd rather think than be considered as a money pump. Hence, I don't listen, I don't watch... At least not what they'd want me to. I'm ann unplugged-in subversive.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The fact is, the current wave of P2P apps share as soon as downloading has begun- he assumes too much -in that it therefore always equates downloading with uploading
from the article "Now, while you were downloading, you were simultaneously making available for upload what you already had; this is how BitTorrent works, "
not a wholly accurate statement-
it's the uploading.. if I want to set emule to ZERO upload, I'll download at a rate of .0005 kbs, but I will get the files, and NEVER upload.... and not violate the laws....
his/articles assertion that DOWNLOADING can get you these penalties is not correct.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I think you're the only person I've noticed so far to point out the key to understanding the disjoint between penlaties for infringement and theft.
In the case of intellectual property violation, you're dealing with a very powerful industry that has not been subject to largescale "theft" of their product before a few years ago. They suddenly see their profits dropping and believe it to be the result of "theft" through filesharing. Their lobbyists go to work, and we get regressive penalties for filesharing.
In the case of theft of the physical DVD, the retailer has already bought the DVD, so the financial burden falls Not on the production house, but on the retailer... and here's the key... WHO DEALS WITH THEFT ALREADY AND HAS DEALT WITH IT FOREVER, AND WILL DEAL WITH IT INTO THE FUTURE. Shoplifting is a part of the overhead, particularly for large retailers, and while they act to decrease it (cameras, security tags, etc) they know that real steps to ERADICATE it would be silly and drive away patrons. (I'm imagining a wal-mart associate following each and every customer around to make sure that they dont steal... or locking ALL wares behind cases.... attack ferrets to chase and ravage children toying with the locks... etc)
Sorry, that was an extended parenthetical, but i think my point is clear. If store were as fanatical in preventing the shoplifting of CD's and DVD's as the RIAA and MPAA are trying to be regarding their intellectual property rights, nobody would shop there, cause nobody likes being treated like a criminal from the off.
Come read my stupid blagablog. Rants and Giggles
If you're an honest person and you don't do the crime, then whatever penalties are irrelevant.
Is it possible to avoid doing the crime? There exists combinatoric evidence that it's next to impossible to create an original melody.
By that logic, let's compare littering to a bank robbery.
Littering = Very easy to avoid being found out. It's not like people really notice someone drop something on the ground.
Bank robbery = Security cameras, guards, silent alarms, FBI involvement.
So, by your logic, since it's much, much easier to get caught robbing a bank than littering, you should get a much much stiffer penalty when caught throwing a gum wrapper on the ground.
Shall we say a $500 billion fine, and 4000 years in jail? That should keep your d = pc formula balanced...
That is an interesting idea. Making the value of a crime negative, or "not worth-it" is something that I support. But what about the difference between criminal and civil? The copyright laws make it criminial to do certain things. But how negative should the penalty of a crime be so to stop the crime?
In the United States we generally agree that cutting the hand off of a theif is too negative. But fining someone into the ground is not. Fining a $1M is a nice idea in theory, but what good would it accomplish? The person that steals from Wal-mart, generally speaking, is not wealthy enough to buy the items in the first place, and therefore wouldn't have the means to pay in the first place. Placing a regressive fine on those who don't have the money to begin with would benefit society little (if the shoplifter only makes $25K a year, it would take 40 years for the shoplifter to pay the fine; meanwhile the shoplifter has to declare bankrupticy to get out of the judgment, thereby eliminating and circumventing the judgement and the debts of the offendar). $1M is too regressive, as it would ruin the offendar and the fine would never be paid. Rather, fining the offendar on a scale that would allow the offendar to pay, yet make it sufficent to hurt would be better. So in this example our $25K/year shoplifter pays $2,500. Enough to hurt, but not enough to ruin the guy.
But the huge problem that I see with the whole copyright situation is that the punishment is extreme and serves very little purpouse. Why would $3,300,000 be a just punishment? Is the value of the product worth that much? TV shows, movies and music are not valued at insane amounts. Stealing a TV set won't land you a $3M fine. What benefit does fining people into the ground serve the public?
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Soon they'll be able to with the broadcast flag. Sad, but true.
If you had super powers, would you use them for good, or for awesome?
"The stigma and threat of being caught and spending jailtime is the demotivator in the former case. In the latter, if you can't change the opinions of these people that their actions aren't crimes, and its easy to not get caught, you have to severely up the penalties to keep the same level of demotivation."
You have a really strange notion of democracy.
When people think something is right, there should not be a law outlawing that thing. If copying and sharing are considered good values, the government should look into facilitating these actions. Instead, the government tries to make them harder. Something's wrong there.