U.S. Govt: Excessive Piracy Punishments Should Be Avoided

It's about time the U.S. government joined the rest of the world in realizing multi-million fines for downloading a handful of songs is just stupid.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force has released a set of copyright reform proposals. The Government recommends Congress to implement various changes to avoid excessive damages awards and stresses that copyright trolling should not be tolerated.

While I agree with the penalties, Copyright trolling is by far the larger and more damaging problem.

It certainly took them long enough. Multi-million dollar fines for illegal downloading is the internet equivalent of sentencing someone to death for jaywalking or speeding.

Cmdrmonkey said:

It certainly took them long enough. Multi-million dollar fines for illegal downloading is the internet equivalent of sentencing someone to death for jaywalking or speeding.

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Well, they won't do it again will they? Mission accomplished.

Cmdrmonkey said:

It certainly took them long enough. Multi-million dollar fines for illegal downloading is the internet equivalent of sentencing someone to death for jaywalking or speeding.

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In some cases that is justified. If you are doing 100 mph through a school zone while school is letting out. Or out in the middle of a busy freeway runs in and out of lanes. You deserve harsh punishment for all the lives you endanger. Maybe not death, but years in prison for all the lives you endanger

if' youre going 100 down a school zone, it wouldn't be speeding, it'd be wreckless driving.

The penalty for private citizens should be the same, comparatively, to what happens when corporations are caught doing wrong and wind up paying fines.

If the fines are, like, a half a percent of their annual net income, then it should be the same for consumers. Get caught downloading a bunch of movies and make $50,000 a year? $250 fine, now don't do it again sir/ma'am!

People might say, well then they won't be deterred from doing it again! Well, since when have fines for corporations breaking rules ever been an amount that they didn't just laugh off?

Traffic violation fines are typically in the $100 range, and in some cases traffic violations can actually hurt people. I think those fines are fair, provided no one was actually hurt.

Piracy does not hurt anyone, I don't think the fines should be any worse than they are for traffic violations. If anything just make the person pay double what the thing they pirated cost.

also they need to completely revamp the whole IP system as a whole. Right now, you can be sued for making your own content too similar to someone else's content, because of stuff like patents, trademarks etc. This is ridiculous. If you are not directly copying something verbatim, and claiming you made it, you should not be in violation. They need to extend fair use, and actually make it valid.

As an example of how ridiculous this is, there is a Youtube channel that recently trademarked the word "reaction". This means that they own the concept of reaction videos or pretty much anything that has the word reaction in it. This should not even be possible. It's completely absurd. Stuff like this happens all the time.

Cmdrmonkey said:

It certainly took them long enough.

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This Administration could recommend that males not chop off their dicks with dull, rusty knives and the majority of this Congress would call that authoritarianism, socialism, communism, terrorism or all of the above. So it hardly matters how long it took in this case.

Yes, piracy is really more of a nuisance. No one gets killed. No one gets hurt. A lot of pirates never would have bought the product anyway, so???
What about a small fine and losing internet access for a while. The internet access would be a killer punishment.

Thanks to the TPP Canada will now have increased penalties imposed on us for downloading copyrighted materials, and we all know who is responsible for that. Right, USA?

BTW, it used to be perfectly legal to download "stuff" in Canada but not upload. The USA imposing its will upon us sure changed that quick thanks to their puppet Herr Harper. And you wonder why no one likes you? LOL

rezerekted said:

Thanks to the TPP Canada will now have increased penalties imposed on us for downloading copyrighted materials, and we all know who is responsible for that. Right, USA?

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Yeah pisses me off that Trudeau is signing that shit. There is practically nothing even good about the TPP. The only people who will benifit is the big head honcho execs of big multi national companies, and the US government.

I guess it's time to look into a VPN in Russia or something. Russia seems to be a safe goto country to protect ourselves from our corrupt governments. Thanks Russia.

Red Squirrel said:

Traffic violation fines are typically in the $100 range, and in some cases traffic violations can actually hurt people. I think those fines are fair, provided no one was actually hurt.

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Out here in California, they add all kinds of court and other fees to a traffic fine, so most simple violations will cost you close to $500. Some as simple as not coming to a complete stop before turning right on a red light can set you back $500.

heatlesssun said:

This Administration could recommend that males not chop off their dicks with dull, rusty knives and the majority of this Congress would call that authoritarianism, socialism, communism, terrorism or all of the above. So it hardly matters how long it took in this case.

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Because having the government all up in me and my doctor's shit is not socialist or communist or authoritarian? ok.

"Nuance" in 3... 2... 1...