Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100 • Hacker News Board

Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

#81

Post by Tsagadai » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 8:40 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #69

Tsagadai wrote: post #60

In 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' comput…

Think of a system that works much the same way as speed cameras work in some countries. You deter the majority of people from speeding in a particular area. You automate an amnesty into the system for certain types of vehicles (emergency services, military, diplomatic) but instead put a protection on publicly owned computers, libraries, schools and charities (which, IMO, should not have to pay for copyrighted works anyway and it is already too much effort to enforce). Create an independent arbiter to handle false-positives and exceptional circumstances without any direct connection to financial interests (a government, funded by the fines or industry funded). Send the remaining money to the copyright holder.

There is the same incentive now for blocking MediaSentry and the like, why would the change escalate this? Griefers already do this too but usually with material far more illegal than music.

The present system doesn't make sense. It should not be OK for a company to bankrupt someone over something that can be legally purchased for a minimal amount. Both enforcement and defence against enforcement are too expensive, time-consuming and economically pointless. Having an efficient system is better than having an inefficient system.

Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

#82

Post by barrkel » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 8:46 AM UTC

cynest wrote: post #68

Tsagadai wrote: post #60

In 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.

There's plenty of precedents for fines that become much more expensive if you challenge them in court, because being found guilty by a court indicates a higher degree of confidence in the finding.

Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

#83

Post by wisty » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 9:42 AM UTC

eli wrote: post #51

Err, I wonder what percent of people think parking tickets should be under $5. Not sure that means it's a good policy.

You could tell it's a bad policy if everyone was infringing, and there were obviously grave negative consequences.

Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

#84

Post by div » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 9:49 AM UTC

sophacles wrote: post #56

qjz wrote: post #45

Only 52 precent of American adults support punishment at all It seems the real story is that 48 percent support no penalty at all. Why the misleading (and inaccurate) headline?

Because no penalty is functionally the same as a $0 fine, which is well under $100. (if there are nth-time offender bumps to the fine price, then they become different, but that is not studied here).

No penalty implies a moral / ethical stance that is different from even a $1 penalty.

The underlying argument being that the majority of the population finds the current laws to be unjust not in measure, but on principle.

Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

#85

Post by yardie » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 10:06 AM UTC

brc wrote: post #55

Surveying 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.

Unless I actually need it for business (in which case it makes me money) I wouldn't pay more than $15 for most applications or games. Photoshop, MS Office, AutoCAD, Maya, Quickbooks yes. Quicken, Toast, and games >$20, no.

Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

#86

Post by Confusion » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 10:30 AM UTC

guard-of-terra wrote: post #66

eli wrote: post #51

Err, 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.

The trouble is that the parking tickets may have caused the decline of the number of people parked in places where they prevent traffic or provoke accidents. In that case, the major annoyance is gone and the parking tickets is only the new minor annoyance, but now the biggest, that took it's place. Reversing the amount or height of parking tickets will not cause a decline in annoyance then.

Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

#87

Post by vidarh » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 10:38 AM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #62

duairc wrote: post #46

Oh 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 si…

Most people who write novels never make any money of them, because they never get published.

Most of the ones that do, makes a pittance.

The percentage of authors that actually makes a living publishing novels is vanishingly small.

If the possibility of making lots of money writing novels is a big incentive for you, presumably you're the type of person who also think they have a good shot at making it big in Vegas.

I'm not necessarily dead set against copyright, but if these people are largely incentivized by money, then society could solve that issue far cheaper and with far fewer restrictions than what copyright provides for, and still pay these people more money than they get today, by creating grants awarded based on some measure of popularity.

Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

#88

Post by lurchpop » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 10:45 AM UTC

Here's a place where tort reform could be applied sanely.

Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

#89

Post by Meai » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 11:05 AM UTC

Tsagadai wrote: post #60

In 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.

People love getting hung up on definite numbers, it's weird. All fines should be a percentage of income. A parking ticket for a billionaire should be thousands of dollars. Again: the exact number doesn't matter in this discussion, what matters is that it should hurt appropriately. $100 hurts appropriately...for who knows who. Determining the algorithm should be the responsibility of mathematicians, economy professors and with input from social workers. All walks of life.

Re: Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

#90

Post by forensic » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 11:34 AM UTC

brc wrote: post #55

Surveying 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.

difference between corporate policy and government policy. Government policy is supposed to be democratic.