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Comment by ZachPruckowski | Hacker News Reader

3.1% of Americans are either in prison or on parole. When you realize that kids and the elderly are going to be underrepresented in prisons, and that prisons are like 90% male, it's not surprising that a group like 4chan would have a lot of people who had been convicted of crimes there.

And then you have self-identifiers. Between filesharing, underage drinking, speeding, and pot, you're going to have a hard time finding anyone between 18 and 30 who hasn't committed at least one crime, even if unconvicted.

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The reported number does sound pretty low since a not insignificant part of 4chan is dedicated to anime and there's got to be quite a few people who grab fansubs and read manga scanlations, both of which are clearly illegal.

I'm also wondering what the Drug User questions looks for. People who are taking illegal substances or people who are taking prescribed medication. It sure is interesting to compare that percentage to the criminal question.

Of people who actually answered that particular question, 24% identified as "criminal or partaking in criminal activities".

So seventy-something percent are lying or don't know enough laws.

I doubt anyone outside of copyright lobbyists consider reading translated manga a crime.

Copyright infringement is normally a civil matter, not a criminal one. Just because it is illegal does not make it criminal.

http://www.video777.com/images/general/FBI%20Copyright%20War...

There are criminal penalties for copyright infringement. You'd have to really piss off the judge and prosecutor to get charged with it for private piracy, but it's technically a criminal issue.

The NET Act criminalized many instances of copyright infringement, but they are not normally pursued in that manner.

Also, criminal and civil are not mutually exclusive. They can be both.

That may be true (tough 3.1% seems awefully high, I tought the number closest to 0.1%) but the thing is people rarely think of themselves as criminal. I certainly wouldn't because consider myself a criminal because of illegally downloaded files.

I may have been mislead by the fact that in my language (French) there's a very fine distinction between a crime (un crime) and an offence ("un délit"), in that the former carries a sense of gravity, while the later is just an infraction.

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