Boing Boing compares the penalties for shoplifting a DVD with the penalties for downloading a DVD. Apparently what would be best for society is for everyone who is dowloading illegally (all the millions of them) to stop and start stealing DVDs directly from stores.
Aside
“The worse the punishment, the worse the crime.”
Not quite. Let’s say that you commit crime A and there is a 10% chance that we will be able to catch you with the crime-solving techniques we have today. Clearly, you have to be punished in excess of 10x the value of your crime (10x value punishment would mean that you would break even, on average, for committing the crime – you steal $1,000 ten times, get caught once and get fined $10,000, the amount you stole over those ten times).
What we’re saying as a society is that with those shoplifting tags and such, it is much much more likely for you to be caught stealing than it is for you to be caught downloading. In fact, people have said that you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than being caught for downloading. On the other hand, if I try to walk out of my local WalMart with a DVD, it’s going to set off the security sensors, I’m going to be caught on their security tapes and the case is closed so to speak.
It’s the fact that enforcement of said laws is almost non-existant that makes the penalties so high.