Re: Devastating internet censorship plan (new SOPA) to be put in practice starting Ju
I never said all copyright is bad.
One person did and I directly responded to that person. I don't know where the hell you're getting this idea that I'm pasting Ruby's comment on the whole, but I'm annoyed that no one steps up and points out the sheer stupidity of someone taking up the platform and going far off into stupidity.
Personally I think there needs to be a difference legally between corporate copyright infringement and personal copyright infringement. Having average joe have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for something they aren't doing for profit is just ridiculous. However if it's a corporation breaking copyright then a couple hundred thousand dollars is a small amount.
My problem with current copyright laws is that it treats both people and companies like the same thing. It's not the existence of copyright laws, it's how far they take it.
The question then becomes if they're not using it for profit, what are they using it for? If I'm doing a not-for-profit documentary film and I happen to need a sample of a song, clip of a movie, or some other piece of media I didn't create, then I have the ability to do so as long as I'm cutting that piece to where I make my point and not just throwing up the entire copy of Jay-Z's Black Album because I felt like it. If someone's uploading content to a site, like MegaUpload, that they ripped/hacked/copied, then it becomes a problem because when you buy something on a disk, you're not the owner of that content, but on the medium of which that content exists; ie. the DVD, Blu-Ray, piece of paper. Now in most cases, you're not undermining the artist/actor/director themselves because they sign huge contracts with the production studios before they get involved with anything. Who gets hurt are the technicians, engineers, IT personnel, mail-room guys, etc who work at said publisher. That's a lot of overhead that might end up having to be downsized because, for example, a game sells a million copies but is actually played by 3 million unique users who got the game through file sharing. That is part of the reason why those penalties tend to be high.
Another is perceived damages which no one can argue are outrageous when you consider the cases of 13-year-olds and old people getting sued and losing cases where they're expected to pay back half a million bucks. But the fact of the matter remains that there are some real issues with the mentality of "they don't deserve my money so I'll just download the content for free and I'll pay if I feel like it." No where in the real world can you just walk in to a business and say "I want you to give me something and if it's good I'll
consider giving you money for it." That's a pretty fucked up mentality, IMHO.
As for why I challenged you on your intentions you have a track record of shitting on threads almost as bad as mine. The thing that irks me though is where as my shitting on threads is completely random and unintentional and I rarely go into a thread with the intention of starting a fight, your shitting on threads are deliberate and intentional and you go into it full force knowing full well what you are doing. While yes your shitting on threads is more civil, you still have a fair number of threads you have argued into oblivion.
I've argued those threads and threads like this because I feel there are fundamental problems in the thought process people go through to reach certain conclusions. Though I may agree with their general conclusions, I do often take issue with how they got there or what they end up doing when they reach said conclusion. Some people, such as Ruby in the post I originally quoted, say things so outrageous and downright absurd that it invalidates anything they may have to say that's agreeable because the glaring issue of saying something like "copyright never helped anyone" or something to that effect.
If you want me to cut the shit then okay. I don't find the existence of copyright laws bad, I find how far they take it to the extremes bad. The fact that we have people sitting in prison serving longer prison terms than pedophiles or rapists or murders is utterly ridiculous. By no stretch of any sort of logic should a person serve longer prison terms for copyright infringement than violent crimes. Also how they charge you both on the state level and federal level is double jeopardy. If it was any other crime and failing a conviction on the state level they just whip right around and charge them on the federal level you would have people screaming double jeopardy, however since it's copyright infringement that makes it a-okay.
They serve those prison terms because of multiple counts and the few times that someone actually goes to prison over something like that is when they themselves are the owner, operator, and beneficiary of said copyright infringement, like Kim DotCom. Average Joe down the street won't ever go to prison because of copyright infringement. His case is a civil matter which if he loses will force him to pay off damages, which as previously explored are often notoriously high based on speculation rather than actual research.
As for "double jeopardy" this is nothing new as far as the US Government is concerned. Back in 1991, an exception to the double jeopardy rule was used during the Rodney King trial, where the cops who beat King were tried once in a state court where they were acquitted and then tried again on the federal level where they were convicted, because state and federal governments are considered different sovereign entities. This isn't a "because it's copyright infringement" or any specific crime issue. This is fundamental legal policy of the United States, period.
