[Japo]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sebatianos @ Jun 3 2007, 08:42 AM) [snapback]292744[/snapback]</div>

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Japofran @ Jun 2 2007, 12:42 PM) [snapback]292662[/snapback]

You know a law is good because people spontaneouly abide by it with hardly any need for state vigilance, actually they will report the crime themselves, in fact they would impose the law upon themselves should they start to live in a desert island.[/b]

There can simply be no such law, because no matter how good a law is, there's always a nutcase who would break it just to test the limits of what can be done and what one can get away with.[/b][/quote]
And the rest of the society would spontaneouly go and get him. There are such laws indeed, one outlawing killing is the clearest example.

Even though I've committed piracy occasionally, I still think that it's not the right thing to presume everyone is guilty, and I'm not moving from there. Besides what I've pirated is maybe one thousandth or less than what many friends of mine do, not to talk about big for-profit piracy networks, so if I certify that to the authorities will I get to pay less?

Also I made another less ethical, more practical point. Not a single penny of the money stolen by the Spanish authorities from the consumers goes to Hollywood etc. It goes whole to a group of exclusively Spanish so-called authors, whose share of the public's tastes and downloads is minoritary. The piracy issue is a mere excuse the whole time.

Originally posted by Sebastianos
And here's the problem, in the modern society almost everybody (if not acctually really everybody) with an internet connection has at one point or the other broken the copyright law. I mean, sure, some people only downloaded a few songs or maybe even just a few pictures (maybe just got them as a joke from a friend), but but that doesn't mean they had the right to. Even if you just open a pps sent to you by friend and it contains a few funny photoes of movie stars, those photoes are copyrighted, so by recieving and opening it you have in a way pirated. So I really doubt that if we'd look strictly at it, there would be a single person who hasn't broken the copyright protection law even once (you say your father hasn't, well I know mine has, but I doubt my mother has - at least not knowingly).

That's not exactly the way it goes. If I commit piracy for profit, the competent attorney can prosecute me. But if I'm not getting profit, I can only get prosecuted at the iniciative of the copyright holder. That is if I distribute something but its copyright holder doesn't care, I'm as innocent as a baby.

And that's the way it should be, but every time a copyright holder talks about investigating the violation of his own rights, what is perfectly lawful, everybody shouts, "No way!" Why? Because one could have to account for himself. And most of the people would rather distribute his guilt among his neighbours and not being accountable, no matter how many principles are discarded on the way. People like to hide behind the state just like children hide behind their parents, and in the same way they will renounce their ability to choose on their own.