Hacker News Reader

Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

Nobody's life should be ruined over something as banal as copyright infringement. Nobody. Period. Idealist or not. This should be enshrined in law.

View on HN

It's disgusting that we've allowed violation of copyright to be a criminal offense. It should be a civil offense at most, with no possibility of jail time. No wasting money extraditing Kim Dotcom from NZ, no ruining kids' lives for downloading music from the internet.

I'm appalled at Disney, Comcast, and any other media giant that has successfully lobbied for the expansion of the monstrous copyright regime in the USA.

Did you know the FBI wastes time looking into this kind of stuff? Shameful.

Meanwhile, "we address the predominant form of theft in the US with civil court cases, not criminal cases" :

https://twitter.com/djmckenna00/status/1269218616861437952

Did you know that the Dept of Homeland Security wastes time on copyright violations? Truly shameful.

It's a very efficient mechanism for a handful of very powerful companies to slurp a limitless amount of money up without doing any work. Once a work is created, people will pay for it over and over again forever. And where there's a money-making scheme, there's legislation to back it up.

And it's due to copying academic journals, which are mostly funded by public grants money and should really be free to distribute. I feel really sad every time I remember this case.

While I completely agree with the sentiment, the horrifying truth is that bureaucrats aside, even common people are perfectly willing to ruin someone's life over a technicality. You and I are surrounded by such people.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com