File-Sharing Habits Unhindered by Criminal Crackdown

[ph0b0s123]

Generally speaking, most people conform to the dictates of the law because the law proscribes bad behavior: don't kill, don't steal, don't set stuff on fire if it doesn't belong to you, that sort of thing. But the effort to lump file-sharing into the "thou shalt not" pile through the imposition of new laws and harsh criminal penalties is proving to be a tougher sell, particularly among younger people.

This is the crux fo the problem. Laws work when there is high amounts of compliance, i.e everyone agrees with the law. It is only very few who break a good law. This works for murder and most other laws. Now what happens when a law is put in place that most people are happy to break rather than comply with. Is it a valid law any more. This may be more of a philosophical discussion that a legal one, as most legal systems don't have a method of dealing with bogus laws. The US maybe with laws having to comply with the constitution.

Anyway this is the whole problem with Piracy Law. It is something the media industry wanted more that the average man on the street, hence their is not as much compliance as you would expect with other generally agreed with laws.

Any law scholars around to comment on what makes a law a good law?

 

[Strazdas]

On the other hand, in germany the pressure from "your neighboar is going to rat on you for piracy" is huge. ive seen hardcore pirates stop pirating after a student trade to germany.

nope.
Piracy is in full swing here.

Well then a friend who lived there for 6 months misinformed me. He said that your neighbours would rat you out and such. maybe he just got into very anti-piracy area
Then again, We, lithuanians, are pretty much proud to be pirates, it really goes beyond "i donwlaoded the stuff" its more like "in your face, i donwload your stuff and you cant do shit about it, and if you try we hack you". yeah, most of my countrymen are idiots.

 

[Suave Charlie]

Wouldn't a good part of it have to do with the massively disproportionate punishments?
Download an album? WE FINE YOU ELEVENTY BAJILLION POUNDS.

It just makes it seem farcical and you can't really connect with it so people think that it'll never happen to them. Such a massive disconnect between the crime and the punishment surely can't be helping matters.

 

[Epona]

The difference in perceived value of something digital vs something physical is very different, if you steal a physical thing then there is one less of them, if you steal a digital thing then your not really stealing it, your just copying it.

That's like being given excellent service at a restaurant and then not tipping (or accurately, telling the waiter he should be happy he's making $2.75 an hour as it is, since anyone could do his job). Now say that to a game developer.

Remember, it's not theft, it's fraud.

Piracy is telling game developers (and young people wanting to be game developers) that you really don't think their skills/creativity has value. If you continue to treat them like ass, keep expecting games that look and play like ass, and at some point people will stop making games.

"But why do I have to tip the stripper?"

#andimout

Woah slow down there, most piracy I believe is a result of less than excellent service. That said you don't tip your waiter before the meal either, and many other pirates I think act like that. They don't want to waste their money, which they may not have a ton of on something they don't like. So they pirate it, if it is meh they delete it and don't care. If they like it, or even love it, they are more likely to buy it.

Besides if a waiter was horrible, getting your orders wrong, or hardly paid any attention to you would you tip them the same as the one who provided excellent service? It isn't saying that a devs skill or creativity has no value it is that it is in question, and your work has to be quality to get money.

On top of all that, it's only in America where tipping is taken as a matter of course.

Everywhere else in the world, tips are earned, rather than expected. A tip is a reward to the person serving, for above-average service that you think deserves extra recognition. A waiter doing their job (anywhere but the US) gets paid by their employer for doing their job. No more, no less. If they get exemplary service or go out of their way to help, their customers might leave a tip as a personal 'thank you'.

Expecting this as an almost legal requirement is a peculiarly American thing.

The expectation for tips in America comes from lawmakers fuckin over service workers in the US. There are laws on the books in several states that allow minimum wage for waiters and the like to drop far below minimum wage with the retarded reason bein that supposedly tips will "make the difference" however there are absolutely 0 laws to protect service workers in the case this ends up bein completely untrue. On top of that employers have the say over how tips are distributed. They want to split tips completely evenly between every single worker they have from waiters to line cooks to cleaners? Perfectly legal.

That's why I've always tipped really generously whenever I have the money.

Then you are part of the problem. Lawmakers make bad laws and you help make them work instead of refusing to tip.