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French piracy increases after three strikes law
March 14, 2010 | 7:00 am
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By Paul Biba
A study published by the University of Rennes shows that the critics of the three strikes law were right. Instead of the threat of disconnection deterring pirates, the incidence of piracy actually increased 3%.
Additionally, researchers found that half of all the P2P users who downloaded copyrighted music also buy digital music and videos online. This means that if they were disconnected as a result of the new law than music and video sellers would, in fact, lose paying customers!
You can find more information about the report here.
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Sorry, Paul, but that sounds a lot like saying that if Jay Leno stole a car, it would hurt the auto industry because he buys so many more of ‘em. I don’t see the purchasing of one thing as justifying the theft of another.
The point of punishment laws isn’t to make sellers more money off of the perpetrators… it’s to punish the perpetrators, and to warn others not to do the same thing (and thereby make more money off of them).
Theft of a car cannot be compared to IP theft. When stealing a car, you deprive its owner of the use of that car. When stealing IP, you do not deprive anyone of anything, since most IP pirates would not be buying that CD even if they did not “steal” it.
As with most other things, creations are based on other creations in the public domain. In the past few decades, copyright and patent terms have been extended far beyond what is acceptable in a free society. Their proponents are in almost in their entirety former monopoly convicts (“unclean hands”). Record companies have in the past been repeatedly fined by FTC for conspiring to keep CD prices artificially high. Big pharma have been repeatedly found to conspire to keep vitamin prices artificially high.
And the beat goes on..
A lot of pointless points that don’t address the issue at hand.
There are only 2 points speaking directly to the issue:
1. Real property theft is not the same as IP theft. Hence, this is more of a “strictly legal / invented” crime rather than a crime where someone suffers negative consequences and your comparison is misleading.
2. Those who have accumulated most IP happen to also have “unclean hands” as convicted monopolists etc. They have no moral standing to cry wolf.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to understanding that it is counterproductive to focus on such “crimes” is Property Fundamentalism. While for material goods production property works well, most of the evidence we have seems to indicate that severe IP regimes discourage creativity. Yet some people remain stuck in their religion, rejecting Reason.
Is the oxymoron “pointless points” a subtle admission that you are in fact contradicting yourself or is it your subconscious trying to tell you to wake up?