Death penalty for copying
Nowadays all over the world the punishments for copyright infringement are quite cruel. Astronomical figures of fines and a few years of real life in prison today no one is surprised. Therefore, in anti-utopian artwork about copyright, the future is usually even darker - punishments reach the death penalty. Critics of such works complain of exaggeration, noting that in life this can not be reached. However, as we learned from history, this is not only possible, but it has actually happened, namely, in France.
Author photo: Andrey Butko, under license Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
This is written by Christian Engström and Rick Falquing in a pamphlet, an excerpt from which ( about censorship ) I already translated earlier. In the passage that I publish today, they analyze copyright in terms of punishment for its violation.
In June 2010, I (Christian Engström) attended a meeting of the working group in the European Parliament to protect copyright. As guests, we had representatives from MPA and IFPI. These two organizations represent the core of the copyright lobby.
')
An IFPI spokesperson talked about how many fantastic things record labels would put on the market if only online piracy was eradicated or reduced. To achieve this, she offered information campaigns aimed at Internet users and tougher sanctions against violators.
This is exactly what the copyright industry has always said and said for over 10 years. Information campaigns about copyright aimed at Internet users, and the sanctions applied by providers, preferably without involving the courts. But, putting aside other aspects, let us see if we have reasons to think that this will be effective?
When it was my turn to ask a question, I reminded IFPI and MPA that they have more than 10 years of experience in applying such a strategy in the USA and in Europe. It was 1998 when the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) was adopted in the United States. In Europe, over the years, we have witnessed the adoption of a number of laws that strengthen copyright, in particular, in the 2001 EUCD copyright directive, and in 2004 the IPRED directive. We also saw a number of informational campaigns repeating that “file sharing is theft”.
With so much experience from different countries, right holder organizations are undoubtedly in a very good position to judge how effective this strategy was.
“Could you tell us about this experience, and could you give us an example of a country where illegal file sharing would be destroyed or reduced by these sanctions and information campaigns?” I asked the representatives of the IFPI and MPA.
The representative of the IFPI responded that so far this strategy has not been particularly successful, because right holders are forced to go through the courts to punish illegal exchangers, which severely limits the number of cases they can do. IFPI and other rights holders need to create wider returns among the masses in order to achieve effective protection, she said. She hoped that the European Union would help her with legislation to make this possible.
When it came to the example of a country where the tightening of copyright led to a significant decrease in file sharing, she mentioned Sweden, where the IPRED directive was enforced on April 1, 2009. Let's look at the graph of total Internet traffic in Sweden around this time:
That's right, there was a sharp decline in traffic of about 40% on the day the law came into force in Sweden. IFPI and other anti-piracy organizations immediately released jubilant press releases, which said that IPRED really worked. Since then, they have repeated this phrase.
But if you look at the graph, we will see that after 6 months the network traffic has returned to where it was. If this was the success of the file-sharing sanction strategy, it was very short-lived.
And it was the same all over the world. As the representative of the IFPI told the working group of the European Parliament, informing Internet users and tightening sanctions has not yet been able to block the path to illegal file sharing. But they still hope that continuing in the same vein will have an effect.
Nothing indicates that their hopes have any real basis. The “information and coercion” strategy simply does not work, no matter how much they or someone else wants it.
The copyright industry wants more, more, and more, and it doesn’t think that it has been trampled upon our conquered civil liberties in order to maintain its crumbling monopoly and power. When hard measures alone do not work (and they never work) copyright continues to demand more.
Several centuries ago, the punishment for unauthorized copying was wheeling. This is the term with which most people are strangers in our time, this form of punishment was a long and painful death, when the convict was first broken all the bones, and then thrust between the spokes or tied to a wheel carts and put on public display. The man usually died of thirst after a few days.
The monopoly of copying in those days concerned the fabrics, in particular the calico patterns. It was in France in the 18th century, before the revolution.
18th century printed chintz
Some drawings were more popular than others, and in order to earn additional income to the royal treasury, the king sold the monopoly on these drawings to selected members of the nobility, who could in turn cut off his arm and leg for their violation (and they did).
But peasants and commoners themselves could make these drawings. They could make pirated copies of fabrics, bypassing the nobility’s monopoly. Then the nobles went to the king and demanded that the monopoly, which they bought for good money, was supported by the royal power.
The king, in response, introduced punishments for the piracy of these drawings. First, light punishments, then tougher. As a result, death through public torture, which lasted several days, was relied on for this. And these were not just a few unfortunates who were executed for example. Swedish economist and historian Eli Heckscher writes in his work “Merkantilismen”:
16,000 people, almost exclusively ordinary people, died at the hands of the executioner or in the clashes with which the monopoly was surrounded.
And what is surprising: the death penalty did not affect the piracy of the fabric. Despite the fact that most people personally knew someone who was publicly executed, copying remained at the same level.
So here's the question we have to ask:
How long will politicians continue to indulge the requirements of the copyright industry to increase the penalties for copying, although we know from history that no punishment that humanity can invent can keep people from sharing and copying things they like?
Author photo: Andrey Butko, under license Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported
This is written by Christian Engström and Rick Falquing in a pamphlet, an excerpt from which ( about censorship ) I already translated earlier. In the passage that I publish today, they analyze copyright in terms of punishment for its violation.
In June 2010, I (Christian Engström) attended a meeting of the working group in the European Parliament to protect copyright. As guests, we had representatives from MPA and IFPI. These two organizations represent the core of the copyright lobby.
')
An IFPI spokesperson talked about how many fantastic things record labels would put on the market if only online piracy was eradicated or reduced. To achieve this, she offered information campaigns aimed at Internet users and tougher sanctions against violators.
This is exactly what the copyright industry has always said and said for over 10 years. Information campaigns about copyright aimed at Internet users, and the sanctions applied by providers, preferably without involving the courts. But, putting aside other aspects, let us see if we have reasons to think that this will be effective?
When it was my turn to ask a question, I reminded IFPI and MPA that they have more than 10 years of experience in applying such a strategy in the USA and in Europe. It was 1998 when the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) was adopted in the United States. In Europe, over the years, we have witnessed the adoption of a number of laws that strengthen copyright, in particular, in the 2001 EUCD copyright directive, and in 2004 the IPRED directive. We also saw a number of informational campaigns repeating that “file sharing is theft”.
With so much experience from different countries, right holder organizations are undoubtedly in a very good position to judge how effective this strategy was.
“Could you tell us about this experience, and could you give us an example of a country where illegal file sharing would be destroyed or reduced by these sanctions and information campaigns?” I asked the representatives of the IFPI and MPA.
The representative of the IFPI responded that so far this strategy has not been particularly successful, because right holders are forced to go through the courts to punish illegal exchangers, which severely limits the number of cases they can do. IFPI and other rights holders need to create wider returns among the masses in order to achieve effective protection, she said. She hoped that the European Union would help her with legislation to make this possible.
When it came to the example of a country where the tightening of copyright led to a significant decrease in file sharing, she mentioned Sweden, where the IPRED directive was enforced on April 1, 2009. Let's look at the graph of total Internet traffic in Sweden around this time:
That's right, there was a sharp decline in traffic of about 40% on the day the law came into force in Sweden. IFPI and other anti-piracy organizations immediately released jubilant press releases, which said that IPRED really worked. Since then, they have repeated this phrase.
But if you look at the graph, we will see that after 6 months the network traffic has returned to where it was. If this was the success of the file-sharing sanction strategy, it was very short-lived.
And it was the same all over the world. As the representative of the IFPI told the working group of the European Parliament, informing Internet users and tightening sanctions has not yet been able to block the path to illegal file sharing. But they still hope that continuing in the same vein will have an effect.
Nothing indicates that their hopes have any real basis. The “information and coercion” strategy simply does not work, no matter how much they or someone else wants it.
The copyright industry wants more, more, and more, and it doesn’t think that it has been trampled upon our conquered civil liberties in order to maintain its crumbling monopoly and power. When hard measures alone do not work (and they never work) copyright continues to demand more.
Several centuries ago, the punishment for unauthorized copying was wheeling. This is the term with which most people are strangers in our time, this form of punishment was a long and painful death, when the convict was first broken all the bones, and then thrust between the spokes or tied to a wheel carts and put on public display. The man usually died of thirst after a few days.
The monopoly of copying in those days concerned the fabrics, in particular the calico patterns. It was in France in the 18th century, before the revolution.
18th century printed chintz
Some drawings were more popular than others, and in order to earn additional income to the royal treasury, the king sold the monopoly on these drawings to selected members of the nobility, who could in turn cut off his arm and leg for their violation (and they did).
But peasants and commoners themselves could make these drawings. They could make pirated copies of fabrics, bypassing the nobility’s monopoly. Then the nobles went to the king and demanded that the monopoly, which they bought for good money, was supported by the royal power.
The king, in response, introduced punishments for the piracy of these drawings. First, light punishments, then tougher. As a result, death through public torture, which lasted several days, was relied on for this. And these were not just a few unfortunates who were executed for example. Swedish economist and historian Eli Heckscher writes in his work “Merkantilismen”:
Of course, an attempt to stop the progress supported by the course of cruel methods could not be successful. This policy allegedly cost the lives of 16,000 people who were executed and killed in armed clashes, not to mention the innumerable prisoners to slavery in galleys and other punishments. In Valencia, only in one case, 77 people were sentenced to be hanged, 58 to wheeling and 631 to galleys, only one was acquitted, and not one was pardoned. But this was far from effective, so that the use of printed calico during this period was distributed among all social groups in France, as elsewhere.
16,000 people, almost exclusively ordinary people, died at the hands of the executioner or in the clashes with which the monopoly was surrounded.
And what is surprising: the death penalty did not affect the piracy of the fabric. Despite the fact that most people personally knew someone who was publicly executed, copying remained at the same level.
So here's the question we have to ask:
How long will politicians continue to indulge the requirements of the copyright industry to increase the penalties for copying, although we know from history that no punishment that humanity can invent can keep people from sharing and copying things they like?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/165915/
All Articles