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Comment by skizm | Hacker News Reader

In a world where e-sports is a massive enough part of a country's economy that messing with the integrity of it will hurt a large number of people.

(Not saying this is actually the case, but that is a theoretical world where this would be okay)

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That's silly. It's the same logic that got us criminal sentences in the DMCA for copyright violations, since movies, music, and television are a massive part of the American economy.

Federal sentences for bank robbery are 5-10 years.

I mean, bank robbery directly affects $X. It is more difficult to determine how much money is "stolen" when someone violates copyright law, but ultimately if it is more than $X why shouldn't the sentencing be on par with or more than that of bank robbery?

Because a bank robbery is a robbery, not mere theft. In a robbery, you make a credible threat to use force against another human being. That's hopefully still worse than stealing $x.

You would have other charges added in addition to the actual taking of the money which related to how threatening you were at the time of the robbery. I'm saying the actually robbery charges being on par with distributing copyright content and ultimately taking money out of the pockets of the content creators are, at the end of the day, both the same if the same amount of money is taken.

A bank robbery still has about as much in common with copyright violation as with pirating actual ships. I am not threatening anyone when committing copyright violations

A much more convincing argument could be made that theft and copyright violations are the same. Buy theft has quite low punishments (at least in California).

..if that argument were not destroyed by the Supreme Court many years ago. Infringement is not theft, no matter how much big businesses want to equivocate the two in people's minds.

Unauthorized use or reproduction is not theft, as it does not deprive or interfere with use of the original copy.

Stealing your furniture is theft. Taking a look at your furniture, and carving another set exactly like it is copyright infringement.

>It is more difficult to determine how much money is "stolen" when someone violates copyright law

You may violently disagree with this, but if you're struggling to figure out at least a lower bound for how much damage might have been done, the answer is probably "almost none".

I mean if it helps you sleep at night after you pirate a bunch of stuff sure, but ultimately there are people out there who want a digital thing and have the money to buy it. Some percentage of those people pirate the thing and money is lost for the content creator.

Of course this is the incentive that is ultimately at work. It's the same reason referees who point-shave a basketball game will go to federal prison instead of just getting fired.

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