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Germany Accepts Strict Piracy Law
A beautiful mind writes "The TimesOnline is reporting that Germany has accepted a new piracy law, currently the toughest in Europe, which comes into effect on January 1, 2007. From the article: 'Germans risk two years in prison if they illegally download films and music for private use under a new law agreed yesterday. Anybody who downloads films for commercial use could be jailed for up to five years.' Many politicians defended the new law, amongst them Günther Krings, the Christian Democrat legal affairs spokesman, who claimed: 'There should be no legal distinction between stealing chewing gum from a shop and performing an illegal download.'"
That's just crazy, two years!? You wouldn't get that if you went out and stole the DVD itself.
How much does it cost to keep someone jailed for two years? I'd imagine it costs more than a DVD does.
Many people believe that this is due to corruption, it can no longer be attributed to "goodwill" towards the industry and stupidity alone. In any case, it goes way beyond being irresponsible and neglecting the government's duty to take care of its citizens and the long-term effect of this will be civil disobedience and loss of respect for laws in general.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Most popular music out today isn't even worth a stick of chewing gum!
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
It's been said before, but if you're going to steal, create a company first and make sure to steal millions so you don't get punished. You think anybody served jail time when the music industry was convicted of price fixing? Of course not. You think anybody from Sony will serve jailtime under hacking laws for the rootkit fiasco? Of course not, unthinkable.
How much does it cost to kill someone? If someone wants to do it it costs nothing.
Still, those people who do murder someone should be jailed and it costs a lot of money. Thus, cost can't be a factor in prison sentences. If not cost, then what?
Justice. It is why this law in Germany is so bad - because it is not just.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
TFA does not answer the most interesting question. AFAIK in germany you can copy a copyrighted work as much as you want within your household under fair use provisions. This is supported by an extra levy on CD writers, blank media, etc. Does the new law change any of these provisions in favour of the plutocrats or not?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The problem here is that this law isn't going to be enforced properly.
By sneaking in these laws, they prosecute one or two people in the country every now and then. The laws stay in place, people don't care about them because they figure it "won't happen to them", and the movie/music companies are able to bribe politicians into creating even more ridiculous laws.
If only they would attempt to enforce this law en-masse, they would end up with at least 10% (probably more) of the population in jail. Then people would start caring about this and everything would be set right.
Instead, they're going to slowly introduce even worse laws, but only prosecute a tiny percentage of the population. It is an unfortunate situation.
When you kill someone you take their life, the question you should ask is how much is a life worth, not how much killing costs.
The original statement said it costs more to jail someone than the DVD is worth.
It did not say it costs more to jail someone than it costs to DOWNLOAD a DVD.
Punishment should be DIRECTLY related to the cost/impact of he crime.
101010b 2Ah 52o
Hello looser evil government people (that dont know what real work is)
Since my wages havent increased 12% yearly over the last 10 years like many govt people, I hereby
like to claim a 'stolen' amount of cash of $100,000 . The corporates who earned massive returns
have the cash, I would like to see them locked up and my cash returned, because in an infaltion economy
everyone DESERVES inflated revenue, even if their business models are crap.
So wheres my tax discounts eh?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
"Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility" Ambrose Bierce
Zing!
Unless there is also a levy that compensates shopkeepers for stolen goods, the levy on CD writers and media should now be immediately revoked.
I'm glad you raised that often overlooked point. Of course it is also a pure fantasy that every single downloader would have otherwise paid real money for the product, but that's how they create these crazy numbers. My gut feeling is a lot of downloading is purely opportunistic.
"Looking good Vern."
No it shouldn't. That's why we have murder and manslaughter. In both places the victim ends up dead, but the pushisment is different, and rightly so.
Punishment should be DIRECTLY related to the cost/impact of he crime.
Someone else has already pointed out the murder/manslaughter distinction, so I'll leave that. There are other distinctions too, where the end result is the same but the exact circumstances of the crime can make a large difference to the punishment.
Even ignoring that, however, there's another factor that can greatly increase the punishment - the perceived ease of commiting the offence and likelyhood of getting away with it. If it's seen as not really being of any consequence, and is hard to detect and prosecute people, you're going to get more people thinking "why not?" and doing it. To help combat that, you make the punishment harsh; the theory being that people will think "I probably won't get caught, but if I do... it's not worth it". That's part of the reason why these laws all have such stupidly high penalties. It's not just the companies lobbying for unrealistic punishments, it's meant to bea deterrent too.
It's official. Most of you are morons.