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Decriminalizing File Swapping
IAmTheDave writes "Wired reports that judicial activism is taking hold in France, much to the dismay of the recording industry, as judges are beginning to suspend the sentences of convicted file swappers. Further, they believe they are starting a revolution against the draconian laws at the base of the industry's legal agenda, and that sometimes laws need to be changed. Says Judge Dominique Barella of the laws against file swapping in today's society: 'It is similar to the sociological consequences of the Prohibition period in the U.S. (during the 1920s). Certain laws can have unexpected consequences on society.'"
No, it is a judge ruling with personal opinion not fact or rule of law.
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... was undertaken to reduce crime and corruption, solve social problems, reduce the tax burden created by prisons and poorhouses, and improve health and hygiene in America ...
... the court and prison systems were stretched to the breaking point; and corruption of public officials was rampant. Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue and greatly increased government spending. It led many file swappers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition. ...
National prohibition of file swapping
Although consumption of file swapping fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it subsequently increased. Swapped files became more dangerous to consume;
I'm really not seeing how you can see the analogy as anything other than ridiculous, unless you think that a ban on file swapping is leading today's teens to hard drugs.
Furthermore, Prohibition was a grassroots movement, complete with its own political parties, while the enforcement of copyright is driven by media companies, with very little public support. You really can't compare the two, except superficially, in that they both tried to ban something that was popular.
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The purpose of judges in English Law is to rule on the constitutionality of laws and to track and reconcile the hundreds of thousands of precedents. In France's code civile the judges can and do make up new law when it appears to them that a law is inadequate or overbearing.
That's easy to see. Compare the death rates.
Alcohol is the ONLY drug where withdrawls can kill you. Lots of things can be OD'd on, but alcohol is the only one where you can die if you don't get it.
What does this have to do with activism? This is what judges are supposed to do.
I don't think so. Judges are supposed to make rulings based upon the written law, not based upon their opinion of the written law. It's called judicial activism because rather than judging, they are legislating, and thus abusing their power by setting up their own law apart from that approved by those elected by the people specifically as representative lawmakers. (This is from a US perspective. The French system may be different.)
Capitalism is based on private investment, trade in goods and services which are not provided by the state, church, or community.
You do not get investment where private property rights are not protected.
This is not what copyright laws were about, and to the true die-hard oldschool believer and many creators alike still isn't. Copyrights were not ment to be a way to control revenue. Copyrights were meant to promote creativity through the temporary granting of a monopoly over a particular work, kind of a "You have solo control over this work, do with it as you please until you have to give it up to public domain where others can build upon it." After that limited time, works would go into the public domain where they could be built upon, but as the extentions become more and more, this will be seen less and less often. As far as I am concerned though, creators don't have a right to profit, instead they have a right to try to profit (which I think the law works in that sense too), because quite frankly, you really don't know how well a work will do, popularity or profit wise, beforehand.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
The French and American legal and judicial systems are different.
t em)
The American system is based on English Common Law.
The French system is based on The Napoleonic Code.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_sys
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As far as I can tell however though, is that they basically make the argument on why alcohol should be illegal
Well we have the best argument against making alcohol illegal. We tried it and it didn't work. The costs to society of alcohol prohibition were more than that of alcohol regulation. It's the same for marijuana, psychedelics, and opiates.
I'm not so sure about cocaine and methamphetamine. But the libertarian (small l) in me says it's none of the gov'ts business what I take, and even if it were, treatment would be far better than criminal penalties.
I mean we could talk about how criminalization of heroin creates a black market where street thugs and terrorists profit instead of businesses and the govt (through taxes). And how this leads to a decrease in quality causing more overdoses, and how it stigmatizes addicts causing more harm to them than the actual drug does. And how we're wasting millions of dollars incarcerating nonviolent addicts who would be better served by treatment. We wouldn't have to talk about alcohol at all to argue against prohibition from a pure harm reduction standpoint. But that's not how the argument was framed, and alcohol prohibition is a very useful example.
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I would call it a local maxima.
Ayn Rand was a total and absolute asshole who was longing for the caveman days where the one with the biggest stick could beat the shit out of anyone else for no reason whatsoever.
I don't know where you come up with Ayn Rand supporting violence as she opposed violence and the use of force against another.
Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
... She very properly realized that, since the free market is built upon voluntary exchanges, capitalism requires firm moral limits, ruling out violence, coercion, fraud, etc...
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If a society provided no organized protection against force, it would compel every citizen to go about armed, to turn his home into a fortress, to shoot any strangers approaching his door-- or to join a protective gang of citizens who would fight other gangs, formed for the same purpose, and thus bring about the degeneration of that society into the chaos of gang-rule, i.e., rule by brute force, into perpetual tribal warfare of prehistoric savages.
The use of force-- even its retaliatory use-- cannot be left at the discretion of individual citizens. Peaceful co-existence is impossible if a man has to live under the constant threat of force to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment. Whether his neighbor's intentions are good or bad, whether their judgement is rational or irrational, whether they are motivated by a sense of justice or by ignorance or by prejudice or by malice-- the use of force against one man cannot be left to the arbitrary decision of another.
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