Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am lampooning a widespread bias that exists on HN against 'soft' sciences.
bias implies people are unfairly disparaging the soft sciences. most of what I see seems pretty fair.
maybe you're biased?
Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100
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Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100
#62Oh come on, where are there so many copyright apologists here? Even if you're a capitalist the concept of intellectual property doesn't make any sense.
Don't be blinded by the abuse of copyright by megacorps. The idea that if someone works hard on something, they ought to have some commercial control over it is sound. Imagine you wrote a 1000-page novel. Isn't it reasonable for the government to grant you exclusive publishing rights for 14 years? It certainly seems like a sensible incentive for you as a creator. It's hard to make the case that you deserve nothing simply because copying bits is easy.
Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100
#63In other news, bank robbers say bank robberies should be punished by fines under $100.
Valenti, is that you?
Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100
#64Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100
#65Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100
#66Err, I wonder what percent of people think parking tickets should be under $5. Not sure that means it's a good policy.
If people are more annoyed by parking tickets than by people parked in the places where they prevent traffic and provoke accidents, then we should consider toning those down and/or making rules less strict.
But I guess that if the problem really exists, people would be pro big parking ticket fines, because a minority who get those also annoys the whole population.
Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100
#67Surveying people on what fines anything should be is ridiculous. I once made the mistake of surveying people what software product prices should be. Surprise surprise the average was about $15, which I suspect was just as much as they could say without actually asking for free.
And guess what? Apple proved that cheap and abundant software is really the way to go.
People were right but the industry took a while to catch up.
Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100
#68In a real democracy the majority would actually make the laws. A fine of $100 sounds fair, it is still a punishment and would be much more acceptable to police heavily (and with less lawyers involved). I would be fine with automated fines of $100 being handed out to people downloading a file illegally and I think that would be a more effective deterrent than the present lawsuit madness that rules copyright.
> I would be fine with automated fines of $100 being handed out to people downloading a file illegally and I think that would be a more effective deterrent than the present lawsuit madness that rules copyright.
And then enough people challenge the fines to break the system. You still have to guarantee some form of trial.
Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100
#69In a real democracy the majority would actually make the laws. A fine of $100 sounds fair, it is still a punishment and would be much more acceptable to police heavily (and with less lawyers involved). I would be fine with automated fines of $100 being handed out to people downloading a file illegally and I think that would be a more effective deterrent than the present lawsuit madness that rules copyright.
IMO one should never be okay with automated fines of any kind, especially on the Internet. There is far too much potential for false positives, and too much difficulty identifying when a particular download is illegal.
Not to mention, there would be a very strong incentive for the hosts of pirated material to find ways of bypassing the fines and blocking their crawlers. Griefers will install malware on others' computers that downloads illegal songs just to incur $100 fines.
Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
The current laws allow huge fines per song . Download about $100 worth of music (~6 CDs), get hit with over $500,000 in fines. That's simply overkill. A fine of less than $100 (even on a per-song basis) would make the punishment fit the crime.
I thought it was up to $180,000 per violation (~$10 million, if taken to the extreme for 6 CDs)?
The quick summary is that statutory damages are between $750 and $30,000, at the court's discretion, except in the case of willful infringement, wherein they go up to $150,000 per work. Conversely, in cases where the infringer "was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright", damages may be reduced to "no less than $200."
See 17 USC 504 (c) for more information: http://copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#504