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.'"

Comments

Re:prohibition

[s20451]

Okay ...

National prohibition of file swapping ... 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 ...

Although consumption of file swapping fell at the beginning of Prohibition, it subsequently increased. Swapped files became more dangerous to consume; ... 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. ...

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.

Re:Copyright isn't about protecting tangible goods

[Travelsonic]

>...copyright is about protecting the right to profit from an otherwise easily copyable work.

what you are doing is taking away their legal right to profit from the work they own the rights to profit from.

The right to profit from an easily copyable work is something that should be 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.