better copyright punishment

[Starfox64x]

So, over the years Copyright lawsuits have been annoying me... like kids getting sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars for downloading the equivalent of a CD's worth of music, and teens going to jail for sharing their music with friends. Entertaining youtube videos being taken down because they used a song they didn't technically own... It's all fairly annoying, and as much as i would like to say 'Let people use stuff for free!" I can't help but feel sympathy for the creators of original content not getting credit for their work. Imagine making an amazing song, then seeing a commercial for a Sony product with your music in the background and not getting credit or compensation...

So i wanted to come to you with some thoughts about fair copyright laws that would both benefit the creators of original content, along with the music listening community.

So, first of all, how much will the company get for the 'stolen' content. most of the stories i hear include thousands of dollars and jailtime, which i believe is unfair... a more fair charge i think would be the value of the song(s), movies, games and episodes, plus a 50% fee for taking it from a non-regulated source. That way the company will get the value of the song, along with a bonus for the theft of the content.

as for jail time, i find this to be unfair to the taxpayers. They pay for the incarceration of the offenders, while the company itself doesn't even earn money from offender for the charge. I believe if the company demands that the perpetrator should be jailed, they should pay for the funds required to keep him fed and housed. That will discourage the company from trying to use jailtime as a scare for offenders (while still keeping it an option) And not hurting taxpayers for the company's personal fight.

now, that's mainly for personal use... now for those who use it in their youtube videos or whatever, I think there should be a sort of 'usage fee' Where a person can purchase the rights to use the song for their videos. Say $10 for a song, plus a percentage of the revenue they might get from the video.(from ads, or advertising for a site or product, like if they had a video advertising a $1000 motorcycle, than the music co would get a percentage of the profit from it.)

I think these are just two simple ways for the creators of content will get more money than trying to sue a handful of people for amounts that no regular person could pay, while still discouraging offenders from stealing content.

So do you have any thoughts on copyright laws, punishments, etc that would be fair to the offender, while still giving money to the artist and creators?

[Kendrick]

I really like the idea of making the companies pay for incarceration. In fact I think that there are a lot of petty or victimless crimes that it would be nice if we could ask the People if the cost of incarceration was worth it for the offense.

I also agree that the cost or reparations needs to be more realistic.

I remember reading about an RIAA suit that was asking for such a high per-song fine (based on the idea of revenue lost due to the theft by illegal downloading them) that an iPod of downloaded music would have a higher value than all of the money on Earth.

[Starfox64x]

I really like the idea of making the companies pay for incarceration. In fact I think that there are a lot of petty or victimless crimes that it would be nice if we could ask the People if the cost of incarceration was worth it for the offense.

I also agree that the cost or reparations needs to be more realistic.

I remember reading about an RIAA suit that was asking for such a high per-song fine (based on the idea of revenue lost due to the theft by illegal downloading them) that an iPod of downloaded music would have a higher value than all of the money on Earth.

Yeah, that would probably be this video

Which is crazy...

[Needlemouse]

Ah, the media industry and their hyperbolic imaginary numbers.

[Autumn]

Here're the facts;

* People should just stop stealing music. Regardless of how easy it is to obtain.

* People go to jail not on behalf of the music companies but because you've broken your countries' law. You'd go to prison for stealing televisions. Just because an mp3 or avi isn't tangible doesn't mean it's 'fair game' and exempt from law. If you actually look into the individual cases where individuals have been incarcerated because of music theft it normally boils down to their actions in assisting the police You format your HDD as soon as you hear you're going to be charged; you're now obstructing justice by attempting to hide evidence. Other actions stretch over to resisting arrest (this can be done passively).

* People do lose out on a lot when music is stolen. People moan that the music industry is rich and it won't matter, blah blah blah. You work hard to try and become rich and successful don't you? If not you may prefer a Communist-style public ownership of everything... and that always works out for the better, right? The music industry is selling a product. If you don't like that amount of money they make or the way they operate, don't buy their products. It really is as simple as that.

I love buying music legitimately. I try and get any CD's I buy signed (Yup, that's the official Epic Rap Battles of History CD signed by Nice Peter and Epic Lloyd!) and I'm even happy to buy the key-drive albums that are becoming more and more popular.

I do buy online most of the time rather than local high-street HMV etc but most of the online music shops I buy from send me free stickers and posters and all sorts of goodies. It's really rewarding and I know the artist is getting my thanks for the entertainment I love.

[Needlemouse]

Just gonna point out that the punishment for copyright infringement is undoubtedly more harsh than most other punishments out there - primarily due to the fact that the will of the law isn't being enforced by those seeking punishment, but the will of the billionaire media owner's wallet. [Case in point.] And then there's the subject matter of 'not everyone has access the same as you do'. I've seen quite a few authors, for example, who were happy to hear that their books were being pirated in countries that did not distribute them, or had strict informationary censorship laws that prevented them from being imported into the country (similar censorship laws are, last I was aware, currently in place in the U.S. due to the nation being under effective martial law - had V for Vendetta, for example, not been an American product but a wholly British one, it'd be illegal to import and/or order a DVD of the movie because its content would be considered 'incitement to defy the government and its laws'). Not to say that all piracy is good - just pointing out that such things as circumstances do exist, and that it's easy to condemn from a position where one has nothing to want for and it's easy to purchase whatever you please.

[Parker_Izing]

When one steals something, it's former owner loses it, so the burglar haves it... On piracy, one got it, copies it, both first, scores later, got it.

Before legally punishing people, world need to decide what is computer piracy, because a mp3, materially is nothing, imposing a material punishment for it, is basically totalitarism...

Piracy is NOT burglary, so they need to stop it fining it as burglary

[Needlemouse]

The funny thing is that Kim Schmidzt's conviction for piracy was perfectly timed - he was a few months away from releasing the Megabox, which would enter a contract with music artists to cut out the middle-man (i.e. the big-wig billionaire publishers who take the huge cut of the cake and only give a minor piece to the artists themselves) and allow them to get full revenue for people paying to download mp3s at lower prices than the ones iTunes currently provides, with a far smaller cut from the cash revenue at that. Musicians would've seen a 90% increase in revenue had it gone as planned. 'Course, the media companies can't have that. Musicians getting full dues for their own work means that the pirates win! And if the pirates win, who will protect the musicians from losing all of their money? Waaiiit..

[Chapien]

As someone entering the game industry, I've done a lot of research into copyright law and whatnot and though I do not pirate or anything (law is still, well, the law), I do think the law should be changed and that copyright law needs radical reform, at least, in terms of the game industry (I can't really speak for other industries). The statement that the companies lose money for piracy is true - but the statement that the people who made the games loses money is entirely false. The way the video game industry works is entirely broken - most games are published through a big publisher (ie Activision, EA, Ubisoft). When a developer agrees to have his game published by a publisher (something that used to be necessary but is gradually fading away with the advent of steam and other methods of distribution and advertisement), he forfeits 100% of his intellectual property rights to the game - that means if the developer wants to make a sequel, but the publisher doesn't, then, well, they can't. If a publisher wants to put a series in the freezer, it is well within its rights to do so. In addition, anywhere between 80% - 95% of all profits for a game (depending on the publisher and the game) will go to the publisher - NOT the developer. The publisher, mind you, had little to no involvement in MAKING the game. Usually, the publisher is in charge of either funding or marketing. In short, publishers don't make games. They are businessmen. The developers are the real artists/brain behind the game.

So, the real thing stealing from game designers, is not piracy. Piracy will hardly dent the sales of games. The real thing stealing from developers is their own publishers. Until this system is completely reformed and changed, I do not view piracy in a negative light. I myself will not pirate, but I will not condemn or attack those that do so because I no longer can support a system such as this.

Sometimes, publishers just beg for piracy. Usually, if a customer can get a game for full price without any hastle, with everything working, with working multiplayer, no DRM, etc. they WILL buy - even if a free, pirated copy is available - simply because purchasing the game is easier and more convinient. But when a publisher actually makes the game HARDER to get, when they load it with always online DRM, when they load it with activation key after activation key... well. Let me give an example. Ubisoft's servers went down. Everyone who legitimately bought the game cannot play it, but those who pirated it CAN play (because they don't have the always online DRM to go through). In these cases... I'm afraid to say, I do not feel sorry for the publisher. In fact, in these cases, I feel that the publisher is so pathetic, and has made such a massive mistake, that they almost deserve the piracy that they get. When someone can provide your service more conveniently and at a free price... I'm afraid to say that people will go for the free route.

The reason that this doesn't apply as much to the music industry is largely due to iTunes, Google Play, etc which were a successful reaction AGAINST piracy. So far, everything the gaming industry has tried to discourage piracy has flopped on its face and only ENCOURAGED piracy. I actually know someone who pirated a game not because he couldn't afford it - he actually wanted to buy it - but because of the horrible DRM that the game required.

[Kendrick]

While I did my share of downloading music when I was young and the internet was a lawless wasteland, ( O_O ) I actually try very hard to stay on the up and up these days and actually use legitimately free software and buy music, or get it through real free downloads. Heck I've paid for music I could get for free on those "pay what it's worth to you" deals because I honestly liked it that much. (Most recently it was pony tunes by PinkiepieSwear)

Yes I copied the episodes off YouTube, but I WILL buy the season disks when they come out if my heavy handed hints for Christmas bring them not.

But THIS article bears the primary justification you see and feel for piracy. Copyright and trademark law has gone off the rails. I'm not saying piracy is right. it's not. But neither is what a lot of companies do, unfortunately there is no requirement that laws be rooted in morality, reason, or these days even sanity.

[TheColtofPersonality]

I disagree with everything you propose.

First of all $10 per song use?

Something like that would only make things like piracy worse.

And what about fair use, your proposal would eliminate that.

Sorry to say but you miss the whole point on why older copyright laws existed and how by now they have been perverted to serve greedy movie/ record companies who care nothing about human lives and only care about profit margin.

The current copyright system is broken, plain and simple, it only favors big companies with billions of dollars and not the small interdependent artist.

When you buy a song from itunes or something hardly any of that money goes to the artist, it goes to the record companies, it goes to apple and the original creator only gets a fraction of the credit.

The only true way to solve this issue is by using the Creative commons

[Tenkan]

A very interesting opinion on copyright concerning books.

[kamerad]

Stephan Kinsella and David Koepsell have some very illuminating and logical views on the whole idea of "intellectual property" (and, well, the state itself, but let's fight one battle at a time!). I can't very well articulate their views in an abbreviated form; besides that, I think everyone will get a lot more out of it if they go looking for their works on their own.