{"id":3161,"date":"2003-03-19T09:09:57","date_gmt":"2003-03-19T13:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2003\/03\/19\/i-suggest-armed-raids-in-columbia-to"},"modified":"2003-03-19T09:09:57","modified_gmt":"2003-03-19T13:09:57","slug":"i-suggest-armed-raids-in-columbia-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/2003\/03\/19\/i-suggest-armed-raids-in-columbia-too\/","title":{"rendered":"I Suggest Armed Raids in Columbia, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Frank points me to this.<\/A>  I’ll let Texas Rep. John Carter speak for himself:<\/P>
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“What these kids don’t realize is that every time they pull up music and movies and make a copy, they are committing a felony under the United States code. If you were to prosecute someone and give them three years, I think this would act as a deterrent.”<\/P>
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Strong sentences are strong deterrents, right? Totally. Like mandatory minimums<\/A>, for instance.  They were created for all the right reasons<\/A> and worked very well. <\/P>
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Heh.<\/P>
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This is part of a really interesting shift in the RIAA’s strategy.  Will going after individuals, through civil and criminal action, affect consumer behavior? Will it just turn people off from buying music because they’re disgusted with the RIAA? Or will it spur even more piracy? Or, could it actually work?<\/P>
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I don’t have a lot of faith in the latter being true just from harsh sentences.  It’s still going to be difficult to catch most people, and it won’t affect many people outside this country; plus, people will find ways to make themselves more difficult to find.  <\/P>
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I’m not denying that it’s within the RIAA’s and the government’s power to go after people who break the law. I’m not saying they shouldn’t in all cases necessarily.  However, I don’t think it will have the desired impact of curbing file-sharing.<\/P>
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(Note: I realize that Carter isn’t asking for new legislation.  But, there have rarely been prosecutions under the NET Act – no prosecution for limited piracy, as far as I know. In that way, it’s effectively strengthening sentences.)<\/P>
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One other thing: Siva said something very interesting at the conference on Saturday.  In the context of discussing needlework<\/A> and copyright with Alec, he said “If needleworkers got DRM, would that make the world better?”  Good question.<\/P>
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So, I ask: say prosecuting file-sharing did end piracy.  We basically return to the way business worked before, except we purchase things from companies online. We’ve probably scared most people off from using various technologies for perfectly legal purposes.  But, we’re back where we started, which, before the Internet, was acceptable enough.<\/P>
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Is that where we want to end up? Is that optimal?<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank points me to this.  I’ll let Texas Rep. John Carter speak for himself: “What these kids don’t realize is that every time they pull up music and movies and make a copy, they are committing a felony under the United States code. If you were to prosecute someone and give them three years, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/cmusings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}