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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.
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
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...
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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.)
You don't get it. The more severe sentence is true whether you use BitTorrent or simply download them from an FTP server.
The additional penalties have NOTHING to do with the sharing. It's simply because the movie industry has more power and influence with Congress than local retailers. (Which is shocking when you consider that Wal-Mart is a local retailer!)
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
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.
Actually, no, you only get the more severe sntence when you're sharing the files, otherwise YOU aren't actually infringing on anything, just the person sharing it is. This is why the RIAA can't just sit there sharing copies of all its songs on Kazaa and then prosecuting anyone who downloads them.
With BT, you're automatically sharing with all other peers, that's why there's a problem there.
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
That's one of the largest myths about copyright. The copyright industry could easily come after you for every infringing song or movie on your hard drive. It'd rather go after sharers, because in a public relations point of view, they seem more culpable.
Downloading a copy of a song you have no right to have IS infringing a copyright. Whether you keep it or not.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
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.
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
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.
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