Your jaywalking analogy is erroneous. Jaywalking is most often a harmless crime (e.g., crossing a barren street), so it makes no sense to issue tickets in those instances. Indeed, tickets are hardly ever issued in such situations. Yet, when jaywalking is dangerous (like at busy intersections near college campuses), higher penalties are utilized. This is similar to copyright laws which usually preserve harsh penalties for the harmful situations (e.g., someone sneaks into a theater to make a bootleg that may very easily be distributed at hundreds of flea markets).
Just like cop
An alternate and more plausible explanation is the following deterrence principal: The magnitude of a punishment must be indirectly proportional to the frequency with with the punishment is used in order to maintain deterrence.
Copyright laws have severe penalties because they are very rarely enforced against individuals. The nature of technology and cost of litigation make it difficult to increase the frequency of catching violators, so penalties must be increased to maintain deterrence.
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Your jaywalking analogy is erroneous. Jaywalking is most often a harmless crime (e.g., crossing a barren street), so it makes no sense to issue tickets in those instances. Indeed, tickets are hardly ever issued in such situations. Yet, when jaywalking is dangerous (like at busy intersections near college campuses), higher penalties are utilized. This is similar to copyright laws which usually preserve harsh penalties for the harmful situations (e.g., someone sneaks into a theater to make a bootleg that may very easily be distributed at hundreds of flea markets). Just like cop
An alternate and more plausible explanation is the following deterrence principal: The magnitude of a punishment must be indirectly proportional to the frequency with with the punishment is used in order to maintain deterrence. Copyright laws have severe penalties because they are very rarely enforced against individuals. The nature of technology and cost of litigation make it difficult to increase the frequency of catching violators, so penalties must be increased to maintain deterrence.