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Comment by davekinkead | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps this is not the best example given that Spain isn't from a common law tradition but I find the encroachment of criminal penalties for what are essentially civil matters very disturbing.

Criminal law exists to sanction actions that threaten society enough that the state is justified punish offenders ie murder or physical theft. Civil law by contrast exists to right wrongs between private parties ie suing for compensation.

Copyright violations strike me as a clear case for tort. It's a commercial, not a penal matter, but thanks to effective lobbying, the state has now become the MPAA's commercial lawyer.

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Civil law by contrast exists to right wrongs between private parties ie suing for compensation.

I'd be the first to agree that draconian penalties for copyright infringement are inappropriate, but I don't think the above is a strong argument, partly because it assumes that whoever is being sued for copyright infringement actually has sufficient funds to make good on any harm they've done, and partly because it assumes that harm can be quantified to a standard a court will accept. Neither of those things is necessarily true, though substantial harm may come to the copyright holder who has been wronged all the same.

> Civil law by contrast exists to right wrongs between private parties ie suing for compensation

Civil law exists for exactly this reason, and has for hundreds of years. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(common_law)#Purpose>

Whether or not it is effective or fair is a different matter. As you point out, there are often financial & power imbalances between parties. One would have to make a very different kind of argument that this justifies the state prosecuting on the wronged party's behalf rather than say, making tort more equitable.

Okay, then you can jail people if and only if you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the downloaders they enabled were going to buy that music otherwise. Criminal court? Criminal court standards.

Six years is still pretty fucking ridiculous. And I somehow doubt the newspapers will see any management go to jail for grabbing people's photos from Flickr.

>Okay, then you can jail people if and only if you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the downloaders they enabled were going to buy that music otherwise.

Providing pirated content is against the law whether the downloaders were going to buy the music otherwise or not.

So I don't see how your requirement applies.

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