Trerro meeped me, so I decided to post..
There are two main questions being asked in this forum.
1. What should the punishment be for breaking copyright law?
2. What should copyright law be?
Really, they go hand in hand.
1. Personal copyright infringement should not be as punished as theft, because while the two like to be equated, they are not the same. Theft is
the act of stealing; the wrongful taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another; larceny.
Copying is not theft. There is no " taking and carrying away of the personal goods or property of another" If you were able to make a copy of my laptop, then you would end up with a laptop but I would still have mine. I do not inherently lose anything.
2. Copyright law is insane. Warner Music Group owns the Happy Birthday song. Technically, no one can sing that unless they pay them. They make $2 million a year off of that.
(Source)Look at this chart
We don't need copyright to be as long as it is. It has been thwarted from its original goal of letting creativity flourish. At this point it only helps the mega stars, not the little guys who were the supposed benefactors. Copyright for 105 years! 105! There is no point to that. If you cannot make a living off your product after a reasonable amount of time, say a decade maybe two, then it isn't working for you. The original sane standard was 27 years. The only point of the century long copyrights are for corporations to make money many years after the artist is dead. The point is to encourage creation, a shorter copyright term would actually encourage more creation because it is necessary to survive and possible. Mashups and remixes are creative content. I can copy Mozart's work, but I cannot copy any part of a Benny Goodman song even though the music is from the 40s and he died over two decades ago. Musicians make pittance off recordings, they make most of their money off concerts.
Currently, the statutory damages for copyright infringement are $200 to $150,00 per work.
(Source) That means one accidental illegally downloaded song would cost at minimum 200x the base price and that is is the person was "not aware and had no reason to believe" they had downloaded the song. A purposeful download would be much more, some have been fined the maximum, $150,000 per song. Quite frankely, that is insane. One song should not bankrupt you.
I do not believe copyrights should exist the way they do, the limits are too long and material it covers is too broad. So I am not for enforcing copyright laws against music downloads at all. However, if we do reform the system with more reasonable timeframes, the penalties should be 2-50x the cost of the song. For example, if Joe downloads 1000 copyright infringing songs off bittorrent and gets caught, he should have to pay between $2,000 and $50,000. The final price would be decided by the judge. I am not in favor of any penalty greater than 50x the cost in any situation because judges have often abused their power to make a statement. While most band would be much better off releasing music for free then letting people pay or shows or posters and support the band in other ways, they should have the right to make that decision.
I also support competent copyright laws for games books and movies. If you cannot make a living after two decades, tough cookies. However, it takes a colossal amount of time and money to make a blockbuster game or movie and that effort should be rewarded. But the current system is overbearing and unnecessary.
PS. I hope this is mostly coherent, I did write it at at 1AM
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