http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=31256 This made me laugh: [quote:63c3bd4bbc] If you copy Craig David's CD you get ten years, but if you punch him in the face and pummel him into a seven day coma you will only get six.[/quote:63c3bd4bbc]
No one's going to take it seriously. Everyone will have illegal software on their computers, and the government won't be able to do anything because they're outnumbered and outgunned. It's going to be Prohibition all over again.
Indeed. If every case of illegally downloaded -pirated- or otherwise illegally copied digital material would be persecuted, the judicative systems of several countries would implode due to the sheer number of cases. But as you mentioned it, in quite some traditional law systems, several crimes on material values are still being punished harder than violent crimes where physical harm was induced on a human being. Two examples from 1995, in Germany: a woman commited fraud, embezzled an amount of money somewhere between 20 000 and 30 000 from several joint owners: five years, three of them without probation. (Fine. She ruined a few people who aren't going to see their money again, so.) A man of 28 got a sixteen year old girl high on dope and raped her, and then claimed he was so high himself that he didn't hear her pleas: two years on probation. And those both weren't extreme examples back then. *shrughs* I suppose the law still is, in parts, an instrument the having use to protect their goods.
as a rule, rape victims and people who got beat up in a bar fight don't have very strong lobbies in congress. after all, petty thugs and women who dress like sluts, respectively, aren't OUR sort of people say those in power.
