Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/11/sweet-sanity-75-of-americans-say-infringement-fines-should-be-under-100.ars

by evo_9 • 15 years ago

207 122 15 years ago

arstechnica.com

anigbrowl5• 15 years ago

Those darn social science majors and their worthless degrees. If only they would get real jobs! http://piracy.ssrc.org/the-copy-culture-survey-infringement-...

ugh2• 15 years ago

anigbrowl5• 15 years ago

I am lampooning a widespread bias that exists on HN against 'soft' sciences.

pagekalisedown• 15 years ago

In other news, bank robbers say bank robberies should be punished by fines under $100.

MaxGabriel• 15 years ago

First, it does indicate a problem with the copyright system when such a large number of people (+50%, per Free Culture) are 'felons' under US law and liable for hundreds of thousands in damages.

Second, wouldn't it be reasonable for the bank robbers to request that they're not sentenced to death for robbing banks? Can't they argue the punishment doesn't match the crime?

masterzora6• 15 years ago

First, it does indicate a problem with the copyright system when such a large number of people (+50%, per Free Culture) are 'felons' under US law and liable for hundreds of thousands in damages.

While I agree with your conclusions, the logic here is flawed. If everyone started shoplifting, for example, it wouldn't indicate a problem with the laws that people are now criminals.

(Sidenote: Only a small number of people are felons on account of copyright. Under US law, to be a felon you have to have been convicted of a felony.)

eli4• 15 years ago

I disagree. +50% of people probably think their taxes should be much lower. Does that necessarily indicate our taxes are way too high?

PotatoEngineer2• 15 years ago

The current laws allow huge fines per song. Download about $100 worth of music (~6 CDs), get hit with over $500,000 in fines. That's simply overkill. A fine of less than $100 (even on a per-song basis) would make the punishment fit the crime.

carbocation• 15 years ago

I thought it was up to $180,000 per violation (~$10 million, if taken to the extreme for 6 CDs)?

joshAg10• 15 years ago

I am troubled by the fact that you consider the entirety of America to be copyright infringers when the study only indicated that 46% (plus/minus 2%) of americans actually did so. That leaves 53% of non-copyright infringers who think agree with the copyright infringers (assuming all copyright infringers agree that fines should be under $100).

Your statement also brings up the question of whether something that an entire population (according to you) is doing should even be illegal.

sp3323• 15 years ago

Copyright laws are so extreme I don't see how you can avoid breaking them. Singing a popular song in a crowded place? You owe performance royalties to the songwriter. Use a song as a soundtrack to a Youtube video? You'll be lucky if they just take your video down, that's commercial-scale infringement! Maybe huge fines, or thousands of dollars in settlements.

JoshTriplett2• 15 years ago

The survey didn't just ask Americans who download music; it asked Americans in general. The results from the article suggest that many Americans (48%) don't think this should count as a crime at all.

eogas• 15 years ago

$100 fine for every 99 cents they steal? I don't think the bank robbers' union would support that.

darth_static• 15 years ago

The fines for pirating music are ridiculous. I remember reading somewhere that the fines for pirating Prince's entire discography are more than Prince has made from those albums. Where's the sense in that?

marchdown• 15 years ago

These fines were never paid. It's like saying that all the popcorn in a movie theater would cost more than the theater itself. It doesn't make much sense to compare the two numbers.

beedogs• 15 years ago

In other news, your analogy is horrible.

dasil0035• 15 years ago

Valenti, is that you?

JoshTriplett2• 15 years ago

Even better than the statistic quoted in the title, 48% of Americans don't believe any fine or other punishment should exist at all. The quoted statistic actually refers to 75% of the remaining 52%.

chaz• 15 years ago

This is actually the larger issue -- that piracy isn't viewed as something that should be illegal. The fines are just a detail of applicable punishment, and exorbitantly high fines are a distraction.

Egregore• 15 years ago

Is in US possible a referendum on this matter?

krschultz• 15 years ago

Unfortunately the US federal government does not have a mechanism for a referendum. Some states do, but this would be a federal matter.

joshAg10• 15 years ago

personally, i think that anyone caught infringing should pay a fine equal to the cheapest retail price (over say, the past year) of the thing infringed(like for like, if you pirated the hd version of a movie, you have to buy the blu ray or hd dvd version. if you took a cam'ed version, you have to buy a movie ticket), iff they do not already own it.

yeah, there's a whole bunch of issues that would have to be ironed out and yes, there's no proof you would have even bought whatever you infringed on in the first place, but i feel like its a much saner starting point than what we have now.

PotatoEngineer2• 15 years ago

That would encourage piracy. If you pirate a movie right when it comes out, that's $20 or so, but after a year, it gets closer to $10. So: pirate it now, pay next year's price in the worst case!

joshAg10• 15 years ago

no, past year based on the time of infringement, not time of conviction, so if you pirate it June 25, 2011, you pay the cheapest price between June 26th, 2010 and June 25th 2011.

tzs2• 15 years ago

I must be misunderstanding your proposal, because on the face of it that seems to be so colossally ridiculous that I can't believe it is what you intended. Did you misstate your proposal?

There would be virtually no disincentive to infringement under that proposal. Why not just propose eliminating copyright?

joshAg10• 15 years ago

The disincentive is having to pay for the thing you pirated. Not to mention attorney fees if you decide to fight the charge.

wmf2• 15 years ago

While that is just plain common sense, there are still problems. If the fine is no great hardship and your chance of getting caught is less than 1%, it's rational to always infringe rather than pay. Raising the rate of enforcement would be hard since $100 doesn't cover the court costs and thus the industry would be losing money on every case — even ones they win.

joshAg10• 15 years ago

so then why not go after the people producing the infringing copies instad of the people using/buying them? weren't the original copyright laws created to prevent book publishers from printing a book that they didn't have a copyright to print and then selling them? producing infringing content, be it physical or digital, is a completely separate matter from using infringing content.

wmf2• 15 years ago

I was thinking of P2P file sharing, where regular people are the ones making the infringing copies. In P2P I think downloaders should have some responsibility since they request that copies be made. But it goes without saying that professional infringers should also be punished.

jellicle• 15 years ago

Which is fine. Lots of things in the world are uneconomic.

redthrowaway• 15 years ago

As we know, however, people simply aren't the rational economic agents that the economic giants of yore held them to be. Most people would be happy to pay if the legitimate product was better and more convenient than the pirated version. It isn't.

See Gabe Newell's take on piracy. Valve's certainly done well in that respect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLC_zZ5fqFk (piracy bit @1:05, whole interview is worth watching)

http://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-n...

brc2• 15 years ago

I'm not sure I get your point. If someone finds the legitimate product is not better or more convenient than the pirated product, isn't the rational choice to go for the pirated one?

qjz• 15 years ago

Only 52 precent of American adults support punishment at all

It seems the real story is that 48 percent support no penalty at all. Why the misleading (and inaccurate) headline?

sophacles• 15 years ago

Because no penalty is functionally the same as a $0 fine, which is well under $100. (if there are nth-time offender bumps to the fine price, then they become different, but that is not studied here).

div• 15 years ago

No penalty implies a moral / ethical stance that is different from even a $1 penalty.

The underlying argument being that the majority of the population finds the current laws to be unjust not in measure, but on principle.

duairc• 15 years ago

Oh come on, where are there so many copyright apologists here? Even if you're a capitalist the concept of intellectual property doesn't make any sense.

dasil0035• 15 years ago

Don't be blinded by the abuse of copyright by megacorps. The idea that if someone works hard on something, they ought to have some commercial control over it is sound. Imagine you wrote a 1000-page novel. Isn't it reasonable for the government to grant you exclusive publishing rights for 14 years? It certainly seems like a sensible incentive for you as a creator. It's hard to make the case that you deserve nothing simply because copying bits is easy.

thehotdon• 15 years ago

If you intend to make money from your novel, it's your responsibility to find a way to capitalize on it. Obvious approaches include collecting funding/reservations in advance or asking for donations after the fact.

If you release a digital copy of your novel online, it's quite likely that at least a few people will copy it. However, there's also a pretty good chance it will attract more future customers.

toyg2• 15 years ago

The idea that if someone works hard on something, they ought to have some commercial control over it is sound.

Doesn't pass my personal "plumber test": the plumber works hard on plumbing an office, should he have commercial control on those tubes for 14+ years?

vidarh2• 15 years ago

Most people who write novels never make any money of them, because they never get published.

Most of the ones that do, makes a pittance.

The percentage of authors that actually makes a living publishing novels is vanishingly small.

If the possibility of making lots of money writing novels is a big incentive for you, presumably you're the type of person who also think they have a good shot at making it big in Vegas.

I'm not necessarily dead set against copyright, but if these people are largely incentivized by money, then society could solve that issue far cheaper and with far fewer restrictions than what copyright provides for, and still pay these people more money than they get today, by creating grants awarded based on some measure of popularity.

eli4• 15 years ago

Err, I wonder what percent of people think parking tickets should be under $5. Not sure that means it's a good policy.

guard-of-terra3• 15 years ago

If people are more annoyed by parking tickets than by people parked in the places where they prevent traffic and provoke accidents, then we should consider toning those down and/or making rules less strict.

But I guess that if the problem really exists, people would be pro big parking ticket fines, because a minority who get those also annoys the whole population.

Confusion• 15 years ago

The trouble is that the parking tickets may have caused the decline of the number of people parked in places where they prevent traffic or provoke accidents. In that case, the major annoyance is gone and the parking tickets is only the new minor annoyance, but now the biggest, that took it's place. Reversing the amount or height of parking tickets will not cause a decline in annoyance then.

yardie3• 15 years ago

Depends on the infraction. Overrun a meter? just pay the difference. Double parking on a one-lane or major artery? Hang them by the big toe.

jemfinch• 15 years ago

You don't seem to understand that as long as enforcement isn't 100%, the cost of punishment must exceed the cost of compliance if it's going to deter violation.

If the only cost of overrunning a meter were paying the amount of the overrun, any economically rational actor would simply never pay meters. If he doesn't get caught, he's parked for free; if he does get caught, he pays only what he otherwise would have.

The civil penalty for laws like unpaid parking meters and illegal downloading of copyright works should be slightly greater than the original cost times the inverse enforcement rate. If we catch 1% of parking meter cheaters, they should pay at least a hundred times their overrun to ensure that it's economically rational to pay meters. Since we need only deter humans, not "economically rational actors", we can take risk aversion and incomplete knowledge into account and probably decrease that fine somewhat.

The same principle that applies to parking meters applies to copyright infringement.

wisty• 15 years ago

You could tell it's a bad policy if everyone was infringing, and there were obviously grave negative consequences.

brc2• 15 years ago

Surveying people on what fines anything should be is ridiculous.

I once made the mistake of surveying people what software product prices should be. Surprise surprise the average was about $15, which I suspect was just as much as they could say without actually asking for free.

guard-of-terra3• 15 years ago

And guess what? Apple proved that cheap and abundant software is really the way to go.

People were right but the industry took a while to catch up.

yardie3• 15 years ago

Unless I actually need it for business (in which case it makes me money) I wouldn't pay more than $15 for most applications or games. Photoshop, MS Office, AutoCAD, Maya, Quickbooks yes. Quicken, Toast, and games >$20, no.

forensic2• 15 years ago

difference between corporate policy and government policy. Government policy is supposed to be democratic.

christiangenco2• 15 years ago

Let's figure out what the fine should be with math! :D

  (10+0)/2*0.32 + (100+11)/2*0.43 + (1000+101)/2*0.14 + (5000 + 1001)/2 * 0.03 + (100000+5001)/2*0.01 + (250000+100001)/2*0.01 
  = $2467.56

Natsu2• 15 years ago

You're not properly representing the large fraction of people who think the fine should be zero. It's kind of confusing unless you read it carefully, but 49% of people do not support fines at all. That pie chart you're copying only represents the other 51% of the population.

I mention that not to quibble with your formula, but because people seem to be seeing that chart and missing that part of the explanation.

christiangenco2• 15 years ago

In that case, it would be:

  0.51 * ((10+0)/2*0.32 + (100+11)/2*0.43 + (1000+101)/2*0.14 + (5000 + 1001)/2 * 0.03 + (100000+5001)/2*0.01 + (250000+100001)/2*0.01) 
  = $1,258.46

Tsagadai2• 15 years ago

In a real democracy the majority would actually make the laws. A fine of $100 sounds fair, it is still a punishment and would be much more acceptable to police heavily (and with less lawyers involved). I would be fine with automated fines of $100 being handed out to people downloading a file illegally and I think that would be a more effective deterrent than the present lawsuit madness that rules copyright.

cynest• 15 years ago

> I would be fine with automated fines of $100 being handed out to people downloading a file illegally and I think that would be a more effective deterrent than the present lawsuit madness that rules copyright.

And then enough people challenge the fines to break the system. You still have to guarantee some form of trial.

barrkel2• 15 years ago

There's plenty of precedents for fines that become much more expensive if you challenge them in court, because being found guilty by a court indicates a higher degree of confidence in the finding.

nitrogen5• 15 years ago

IMO one should never be okay with automated fines of any kind, especially on the Internet. There is far too much potential for false positives, and too much difficulty identifying when a particular download is illegal.

Not to mention, there would be a very strong incentive for the hosts of pirated material to find ways of bypassing the fines and blocking their crawlers. Griefers will install malware on others' computers that downloads illegal songs just to incur $100 fines.

Tsagadai2• 15 years ago

Think of a system that works much the same way as speed cameras work in some countries. You deter the majority of people from speeding in a particular area. You automate an amnesty into the system for certain types of vehicles (emergency services, military, diplomatic) but instead put a protection on publicly owned computers, libraries, schools and charities (which, IMO, should not have to pay for copyrighted works anyway and it is already too much effort to enforce). Create an independent arbiter to handle false-positives and exceptional circumstances without any direct connection to financial interests (a government, funded by the fines or industry funded). Send the remaining money to the copyright holder.

There is the same incentive now for blocking MediaSentry and the like, why would the change escalate this? Griefers already do this too but usually with material far more illegal than music.

The present system doesn't make sense. It should not be OK for a company to bankrupt someone over something that can be legally purchased for a minimal amount. Both enforcement and defence against enforcement are too expensive, time-consuming and economically pointless. Having an efficient system is better than having an inefficient system.

Meai2• 15 years ago

People love getting hung up on definite numbers, it's weird. All fines should be a percentage of income. A parking ticket for a billionaire should be thousands of dollars. Again: the exact number doesn't matter in this discussion, what matters is that it should hurt appropriately. $100 hurts appropriately...for who knows who. Determining the algorithm should be the responsibility of mathematicians, economy professors and with input from social workers. All walks of life.

sp3323• 15 years ago

The punishment should fit the crime, not the criminal. If parking for too long isn't that big a deal, then no one should be fined thousands of dollars for it.

lurchpop• 15 years ago

Here's a place where tort reform could be applied sanely.

Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines should be under $100

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