Imprisonment for copyright infringement?

[T3l Ca7]

I kept on wondering why the authority gets so uptight about it. I mean if something is created for enjoyment, why not sharing it around? Of course the rich should be paying the creators for the effort they put into producing the things they enjoy. It is not like the poor, such as students and jobless people should not have the right to enjoy things just because some greedy bastards want to make more money.

To compare piracy (for personal use, not for commercial purpose) to stealing is not that appropriate. Stealing is to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force. If person A stole an umbrella from person B, person B would no longer have such umbrella. But with copyright, if person A illegally downloaded a movie, the movie still belongs to the rightful owner. This movie might give $20 worth of enjoyment to person C, but only $5 for person A. So person C might pay $15 and see it in the cinema when the movie comes out. But Person A might wait a couple of months and download a low resolution one from the internet.

One might argue that by allowing people to illegally downloading the movies/music, one effectively reduced the earning, thus diminishing the incentives for the movie producers/musicians from creating new and better music. Really? I mean just look at Youtube, how many people produced free movies so that others can enjoy what they have created? Besides, if something is good enough, people like me would not mind to pay for it. But I see no point in paying for something I am only willing to watch once.

Any thoughts on this?

[Bioture]

Just so you know this topic was debated like 10 years ago.

[Dutch_]

Just the big companies wanting to make more money. I dont think downloading really hurts that many ppl. The only industry that has been proven to be damaged is the pc-gaming industry. But its allright they just bring out their games for consoles or ask monthy fees for online gaming. Movies and software still bring in allot of money. As for the music industry. Ive never agreed with the amount of money some artists get. Creating music should be like a hobby. And as a positive effect allot of artists are going on tour to bring in the cash.
Oh and you cant stop illegal downloading btw, aslong as there is a LAN called the internet ppl will share their files. Bring down torrents and the next solution will pop up within a week

[Jerome Scuggs]

its another case of big business trying to enforce their market shares via political power. what's new

[dads revenge]

why wait a month to download it?

[Doc Flabby]

Move to china, at least they don't pretend to have "freedom". They are already making moves to censor the internet in many countries, the UK already censors certain types of porn that is legal in the USA.

The ironic thing is you probably would get less jail time for stealing the stuff from a shop, as opposed to taking a perfect copy and leaving the original in tac In this case the shop is materially less well off.

The technology to create the "replicators" from star trek is not that far off (i would estimate 50-100years), you'll be able to copy anything, once you reach this point, its pointless to prevent copying. Maybe then people will create art out of love and passion instead of being motivated by profit, all the greatest artists in the past never made art because they wanted to be rich.