Pirating - it's kind of like marijuana possession

This thread features a poll, but this thread is here primarily for discussion of an issue - the poll is just an interesting backdrop to help inform us as to where our members stand on it.

So you may have heard that the DOJ has decided to stop prosecuting non violent drug offenders arrested on possession only. Well they haven't actually stopped, but the number of people that the DOJ has prosecuted annually for drug possession only has dropped from nearly 30,000 per year to a little over a hundred a year. Now the rational is not that there is no victim in the crime, but that they are non-violent offenders and not worth wasting department resources.

Over to the next such issue




The Pirate Bay and other torrent websites have been under attack for copyright infringement, and users who engage in file sharing have also been targeted. The thing is, when you think about it, filesharing is kind of like marijuana use. Now when considering this, I implore to think only of the regular users. Compare a marijuana user to an individual consumer who fileshares a bit, but nothing particularly huge. Compare the consumer who overuses marijuana to a consumer who fileshares a ridiculous amount, but is still primarily a consumer. Then compare the drug dealer to the groups that put together and upload piratable data.

So, when you really think about this, the average filesharing consumer is pretty much like the average marijuana consumer - they're non-violent, and they aren't doing anything which is worth government resources. We pursue them to make examples: how would that work for drug possession, eh? "Oh yeah, let's put another black man in jail for 25 years for marijuana possession - he definitely doesn't deserve it, but we want to make an example of him."

My point here is that pursuing filesharing makes about as much sense as pursuing individual marijuana consumers - pretty much none. So, do you believe that the government should cease wasting it's resources pursuing consumers for filesharing, "pirating"?

 

Well the glaring exception being that the music is copyrighted and the rights belong to someone else, where as weed is not copyrighted, and presumably one buys or grows their own.

 

ahuh, and with that "glaring" exception do you think stealing something like a music album - a copyright which on the free market is usually worth about $7-12, is worth expending a wealth of government resources pursuing prosecution?

 

Seems fairly obvious that is stealing and smoking weed is not.

 

The obvious connection made between the two was that they are non-violent, and the DOJ has decided not to prosecute marijuana possession for that reason. When it comes to this kind of theft, it's quite obviously gotten out of hand when a student is fined $675,000 for pirating 30 songs, a fine of $22,500 per song, and the law allows a penalty of up to $150,000 per song. It seems obvious that that is out of hand. There's an old saying that the punishment should fit the crime. If someone can be fined $150,000 for pirating a single song, I wonder how we can ever make the "Cruel and unusual" argument against nigh any punishment at all.

 

If someone was to commit wire fraud, and clear out your bank accounts, should that not be prosecuted as it is nonviolent?

Of course it should be, as there is a victim in the matter, Same with stealing music. Someone is taking something that does not belong to them.


Smoking weed does not have what I would call an external victim. The bank account of someone else is not cleaned out. Your are comparing apples to something that is not even in the fruit family.

Really? Is that the singular reason? The main reason? Or one amongst many? Please share your sources for this information so that we may explore it together, and we can all see if your contention was right or wrong.

 

You mentioned the fruit family: if you want to compare apples to apples, downloading music is far more akin to shoplifting than it is to identity theft. And generally speaking then, we're talking about petty theft. In most states, the punishment is pretty light. For example, in California petty theft of this amount has a maximum fine of $250 [that's a maximum - not normally imposed] with no jail time, and can be replaced with a small amount of community service.

It actually very clearly does. The vast majority of weed comes from outside of the U.S. and funds organized crime. Nor, speaking of apples to apples, is someone's bank account cleared out when a student downloads a song.

Please, there's no need for silly straw men. I did not say singular reason, and the rest of my post which you parsed out gave pretty clear context in comparison. Someone who downloaded 30 songs, which each go for about 99cents on itunes for a combined total of nearly $30, was fined $675,000. It was a non-violent crime, and the actual damages were not nearly what the fine was.

And so do I gather right that you're fine with the valuation of a single song at $150,000?

 

This wouldn't happen if weed were legal which is why this point is, well pointless when it comes to proving that smoking weed causes harm. Smoking marijuana and theft are not the same thing at all.

As for file sharing, I think it's impractical to hit pirates because there's just too many of them. While it is technically petty theft you'd have to go after millions of Americans and tie up the court systems. It would likely cost more than it's worth. What needs to happen, and for some reason the media industry refuses to do this, is a change in the way media works. SouthParkStudio.com is a great example. Southpark was the most pirated show back in the day, so rather than fight it, they just put it on the internet for free. You can watch most episodes (new ones are delayed a week), I think you can still download them all, and SouthParkStudio collects revenue from ads which don't last as long as your normal TV ads. Everybody wins.

 

Please, there is no need of patently, completely, entirely, and totally silly straw men like the one you posted below.

Can I assume support for your claim regarding the DEA will not be forthcvom9ing That your argument is indeed based on fiction? Or would you like to provide that citation?

 

The government doesn't pursue individual filesharers, only large scale downloaders/sharers and the commercial sites - the equivalents of dealers and pushers. In practice, pirating is already policed in the manner you're suggesting.

 

A couple years ago a man was fined $675,000 for pirating 30 songs, it doesn't seem to me that it is the case that pirating is policed in the manner I'm suggesting, though it is fortunate that it isn't pursued to the degree that marijuana was once pursued.

 

From the resources side, it may make sense to leave them alone. As far as I know, the DOJ doesn't prosecute torrent users. Mostly, it's treated as a civil action and there are groups pursuing claims on behalf of their clients.

Aside from that, if you accept the theory that intellectual property is real property (and most people do accept this theory, or give it little thought), then filesharing is theft. It is a crime by one individual against another individual, and ought to be prosecuted as much as burglary, grand theft auto, etc. Marijuana use, however, only affects the user, and it's an entirely peaceful action. Despite any statute the criminalizes the use of marijuana, it is an activity that has no victim.

The few prosecutions for filesharing appear to be mostly egregious acts, or intended to make an example.

 

You're correct, the DOJ itself does not rigorously pursue filesharing. You're correct, but that isn't really the point I was making - I apologize if I was unclear. Marijuana possession is a crime that can only be prosecuted by the government, and there was a point when it got so out of hand that people got 25 years in prison for mere possession. In my view, even if the DOJ is not the one prosecuting it, that kind of injustice is going on here, as people are being prosecuted for downloading music and fined far, far beyond the actual value of the pirated IP. It happens in many places that someone shoplifting a cd will be given community service or a small fine, of $100 or so. But current law allows for pirated IP to be fined at tens of thousands of the actual value, and that is excessive. And we're not talking here about just big distributors, we're talking about everyday users. And it presents a problem that public funds (courts, etc.) are being used to prosecute what belongs in the joke of small claims court.

 

I won't admit to file sharing ,but if I did here's my take on it. I may go to the Movies once a year because frankly I have a 72" TV and the quality so exceeds even the so called hd movie theaters I'd rather stay at home. If I were to share a movie file the makers of movie would benefit a lot from me because if I like it I literally tell everyone that will listen,hey I saw a great movie last night you need to see it and many of them will see it at the movies because i recommended it. The best thing Movie Makers could do to increase movie goers is to make the experience unbelievable. if that huge screen had the same resolution as one of the new ultra's I'd probably go see every blockbuster that came out !

 

I can agree there. In principle, restitution should be some well-defined multiple, otherwise there is no equality before the law and we are subject to the rule of judges. Community service should be reserved as a means to pay for the prosecution.

 

It's not theft either, because that implies there's something of value being taken away from one party to benefit another, but that's not what happens when digital media are simply copied and distributed.

 

Really horrendous comparison. So if some one breaks into your house and steals your record collection that perfectly okay with you because it's only about 90 bucks worth of stuff.

 

Stealing is not an accurate verb. When one steals, one takes from another. When I copy a file, I am not taking anything from anyone.

 

Marijuana use doesn't directly affect anyone but the user. Filesharing directly affects the bottom line of the owners of the intellectual property shared.

QED

 

It's not? You are not taking something from the person who owns the copyright on it without paying for it?

 

People that want to chase filesharers are uninformed. It's too big and impossible, anyone advocating that just don't know the endless black-hole that is. It will be exactly like the drug war trillions spent and zero progress. If people are tired of spending useless money this isn't the rabithole you want to go down. If you truly want to do something make better alternatives. Netflix has decreases bitrorrent traffic in the US so maybe this artist will have to work for less money or be more economical to keep their salary inflated? Either way there is not way realistically to police the internet without spying on all users.

New data published by the Canadian broadband management company Sandvine reveals that on the average day Netflix and BitTorrent are responsible for 40 percent of all Internet traffic in North America. During peak hours Netflix accounts for a third of all download traffic, while BitTorrent is credited for nearly half of all upload traffic during the busiest time of the day.

 

That's a straw man argument and not even the same thing. Just to let everyone know they all broke the law by replying and re posting the pirate picture as it's copyright also everyone needs to remove their avatars and post permissions from all sources posted in the forums. You know if we're going to fly legit on the interwebs. See how stupid this can get very quickly?

 

Realistically, there needs to be a petty crimes version of copyright law kind of like a speeding ticket you can just prepay online if you want. It incentivizes going after the demand side without having such insane penalties for any violation. If a Judge sees fining Dad $250K for what is 13 year old son downloads while he is at work is not particularly good for business for the plaintiff or the prosecutor, fining dad or son $500 for the 50 anal beads videos son downloaded might not be a big deal.

 

Right, there's no "taking" going on there. The presumption that these copyright holders go on is that of lost sales and revenues, not one of actual theft, which to my understanding at least involves something physical.

Of course, the issue of copyright is a valid one to consider, but it remains something different from theft the way real pirates steal, and all too often commit other crimes in the process. To me there's no comparison between robbing a shipment of physical goods and copying that floppy. The copyright holder can't even prove that a sale was lost, as there's no proving that the recipient of some pirated copy of media would have bought a new copy of it otherwise.

Then there's the issue of what these "pirates" of movies, music, software, etc. end up doing with what they "pirate." Many go on to purchase these things anyway because they recognise the need for a copyright holder to get that money for the item. When that happens a pirated copy becomes more of an unofficial trial than anything, and you certainly can't argue that it was any kind of theft at that point.

But what of those who use a pirated copy of something that they would otherwise have bought and paid for? Well, assuming they weren't going to get the item second-hand (provided that's possible at all), then that is arguably a lost sale, hence a loss to the copyright holder. That's a worst-case scenario, however, and again it's not really possible to judge which users of copied copyrighted wares would have gone that route otherwise. But, the question remains: is that theft? That makes me wonder: how could it be argued that it in fact is theft without resorting to the letter of the law (copyright law, etc.) to justify it? In fact, it begs the question of whether it could be argued at all that this is an act of theft, because theft, again, involves taking something that belongs to someone. I suppose this brings us to the matter of intellectual property, a relatively new concept in human society, and one that is not universally accepted even today. It raises for me this question: can an idea be stolen? We share and 'copy' the ideas of others all the time. We also have long copied and imitated art, literature, etc. since time immemorial. It's an integral part of humanity, in fact.

I see the modern legal approach to these questions as being borne of capitalistic greed and corporate domination over our laws, actually. I fear we've allowed greed to go too far, and one sad effect of that is this modern phenomenon of copyright and no one being able to use or copy anything, anywhere, anytime, without permission from someone else who holds imaginary control over it as either an author or a copyright holder. I also see this severe state as having grown in response to the internet, as corporate execs began panicking and overreacting to what they quickly labelled as "piracy" and "theft" in an effort to stop people doing what comes naturally, which is to copy and share things they like.

 

The way I look at it, file sharing over the internet destroyed the music industry.

It's theft no different than me stealing your I-Phone out of your hands or your car.

Music is copyrighted material just like published books. Why purchase a book if you could copy the book from a computer ? $20 dollars in the book store or $2 of copier paper and a HP or Cannon printer. How many more books do you think will be published in the future ?

With the music industry today, there are a lot of great musicians and groups out there that you will never hear today. It takes a lot of money to produce an album, millions of dollars today and the artist, producers, studio engineers and the industry in general have a right to recoup the cost.