New Round of Lawsuits in Preparation for Oscars

An anonymous reader wrote to mention CNNMoney's coverage of the latest round of MPAA lawsuits targeting end users. From the article: "The civil suits against unnamed "John Doe" defendants seek up to $150,000 per downloaded digital file and come as the film industry prepares for its annual Oscar telecast in Hollywood where awards for top films and stars are given out."

Comments

Re:150K per file?

[DarkEdgeX]

If someone doesn't like this law, they can move to a country that doesn't have such laws (or run for government and try and have the law changed). If you don't want to be punished, do something about it that doesn't involve breaking the law.

Sorry, that just doesn't work. As far as I'm concerned someone pirating movies/music/whatever is engaging in passive resistance. Telling people to "run for office and change the laws," "move to another country," etc. just doesn't work.

Let's assume you did run for office. You're already in a losing proposition because of our two-party system. Then there's the voters. For some reason people in this country are extremely greedy-- the people I've talked to have narrow visions of copyright law. They seem to think they have an equal chance of "making it big" and they want these laws around to help them become millionaires who live the good life. The sad fact is, most "stars" are manufactured. Just look at the Spice Girls for a relatively recent example.

But let's assume you actually manage to get elected. Now you're in a Legislature with a bunch of other Senators/Represenatives who have all had contributions made to them by the MPAA/RIAA/BSA. Do you honestly expect any bill to make it into full debate? Let alone pass? Even if it does make it, it's likely to be done on a voice vote (just as the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act was) which keeps the people who vote anonymous in the public record.

And even if you somehow, magically, get past that, there's the Berne Convention and international organizations which would, very likely, take out their frustrations on you in the form of tariffs or other such economic warfare if you didn't re-enact the laws.

No, those are totally unreasonable and very unlikely to ever work. The only thing that'd work would be if the government was overthrown by force or the laws that affect our legislature were changed to disallow corporate election contributions, disallow the filthy rich from running for office and using all of their personal wealth to campaign with.

Since those aren't likely, that leaves passive resistance like just ignoring the laws and hoping for the best.

Why live under tyranny when your life is so short as it is anyways?