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

#101

Post by sp332 » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 3:09 PM UTC

Meai wrote: post #89

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…

The punishment should fit the crime, not the criminal. If parking for too long isn't that big a deal, then no one should be fined thousands of dollars for it.

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

#102

Post by sp332 » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 3:14 PM UTC

joshAg wrote: post #7

pagekalisedown wrote: post #3

In other news, bank robbers say bank robberies should be punished by fines under $100.

I am troubled by the fact that you consider the entirety of America to be copyright infringers when the study only indicated that 46% (plus/minus 2%) of americans actually did so. That leaves 53% of non-copyright infringers who think agree with the copyright infringers (assuming all copyright infringers agree that fines should be under $100). Your statement also brings up the question of whether something that an ent…

Copyright laws are so extreme I don't see how you can avoid breaking them. Singing a popular song in a crowded place? You owe performance royalties to the songwriter. Use a song as a soundtrack to a Youtube video? You'll be lucky if they just take your video down, that's commercial-scale infringement! Maybe huge fines, or thousands of dollars in settlements.

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

#103

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 4:24 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #82

cynest wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That seems (in the US) to violate one's constitutional right to a trial. That is, exercising one's right to a trial should not increase the potential punishment, as doing so is a deterrent against exercising that fundamental right.

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

#104

Post by cobrausn » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 4:27 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #99

danssig wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or asking for donations after the fact. Right, so if you provide a service you can charge what the market will bear but if you provide an art that happens to be convertible to digital form you need to get on your knees with your hat outstretched and beg for your income. Do you people actually think about what you're saying?

Society has no obligation to make your preferred business model profitable. You don't have a right to make profit, only to try. In this case copyright only exists as an explicit tradeoff by society in order to gain other benefits. If those benefits can be obtained cheaper and/or without the limits imposed by copyright through other means, or if society decides the tradeoff is not worth it, then tough.

Yes, but we don't have a completely free market. We can (and do, all the time actually) put in place rules and regulations that make favorable things which would not be under a completely free market. This can include laws against doing things you could do for free, such as copying some digital media and giving it away for free.

I personally don't think it's an unreasonable restriction until some way is figured out to compensate creators of digital media for their efforts that doesn't care about digital piracy. I do have a problem with some of the efforts that are being put in place to enforce these rules though, much in the same way I have a problem with the TSA.

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

#105

Post by geebee » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 4:35 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #87

dasil003 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even if a novel is unlikely to have great commercial value, I see a great benefit to short term copyright that provides meaningful but limited control over the work to the creator. It's difficult to know what will be valuable in advance.

Now, the current copyright of "life of the author plus seventy years, and oh, wait, is that expiring? on second thought, let's go ahead and add another fifty years unless we decide to go ahead and tack on another fifty years at some point in the future"... that is utterly unjustifiable.

But keep in mind, even the EFF put out a comic satirizing both extremes IP protection ("information, like, wants to be free").

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

#106

Post by yardie » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 4:36 PM UTC

jemfinch wrote: post #100

yardie wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the infraction. Overrun a meter? just pay the difference. Double parking on a one-lane or major artery? Hang them by the big toe.

You don't seem to understand that as long as enforcement isn't 100%, the cost of punishment must exceed the cost of compliance if it's going to deter violation. If the only cost of overrunning a meter were paying the amount of the overrun, any economically rational actor would simply never pay meters . If he doesn't get caught, he's parked for free; if he does get caught, he pays only what he otherwise would have. Th…

I'm more concerned about does the cost of the punishment fit the crime. Using your formula if the original media costs $1 and only 1:20000 people are caught it makes the case that a $20,000 fine is perfectly reasonable. This I disagree with.

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

#107

Post by danssig » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 4:38 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #99

danssig wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or asking for donations after the fact. Right, so if you provide a service you can charge what the market will bear but if you provide an art that happens to be convertible to digital form you need to get on your knees with your hat outstretched and beg for your income. Do you people actually think about what you're saying?

Society has no obligation to make your preferred business model profitable. You don't have a right to make profit, only to try. In this case copyright only exists as an explicit tradeoff by society in order to gain other benefits. If those benefits can be obtained cheaper and/or without the limits imposed by copyright through other means, or if society decides the tradeoff is not worth it, then tough.

The proper response here is for artists to stop producing until society decides art is worth paying for. Begging like a homeless person is not a business model.

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

#108

Post by toyg » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 4:38 PM UTC

danssig wrote: post #94

toyg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that if someone works hard on something, they ought to have some commercial control over it is sound. Doesn't pass my personal "plumber test": the plumber works hard on plumbing an office, should he have commercial control on those tubes for 14+ years?

This has to be one of the worst analogies on the subject I've ever seen. To fix it we would have to invent a device that can scan something the plumber has done and then recreate it on demand. At that point, after years and years of studying to be the best plumber he can be, Joe Plumber goes out and does a job only to have some joker come up, scan his work and then provide his own plumbing service for 1/4th the price…

To fix it we would have to invent a device that can scan something the plumber has done and then recreate it on demand.

It's called China, and that's why prices for units of work in most industries have been falling, in real terms, for the last 30 years.

An author's unit of work is the same unit of work as a plumber's; the difference is that, in the author's case, the client is not the real client: the work is commissioned by a reseller (the editor), and the reseller wants to enjoy all the advantages of cultural work (low costs, infinite duplication) without any of the downsides. Whenever they find a downside, they force a law to remove it artificially.

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

#109

Post by alex_c » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 4:41 PM UTC

Tsagadai wrote: post #81

nitrogen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

There is no universal database of copyright information. The major copyright holders (major record labels, studios, etc.) are ridiculously complex to deal with already. Throw in minor publishers, and independent copyright holders, and what you describe isn't just difficult, it's impossible.

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

#110

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Nov 17, 2011, 4:48 PM UTC

Tsagadai wrote: post #81

nitrogen wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

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).

Simple workaround: set up an automated, anonymous service that pays all college students to run Tor endpoints in their dorms and libraries. Or, set up a charity that provides free Internet access to the poor, and use its spare bandwidth.

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).

You're talking about creating a huge bureaucracy with this system. That's not the kind of make-work job creation we need. Besides, we already have independent arbiters in the courts.

Having an efficient system is better than having an inefficient system.

Having an efficient system with false positives is far worse than an inefficient system with false negatives. I'm opposed to speed cameras for the same reason I'm opposed to automated punishment or automated surveillance of any kind: enforcement of laws should be person vs. person, as a matter of principle. Without the direct human connection, it is too easy for those with the power of enforcement to go significantly overboard.