College Being

Would you steal a car!? If it was as easy as downloading a movie, yeah.

There is a big difference between piracy and stealing. The biggest problem with piracy is how easy it is to do it. There is also relatively low risk of getting caught due to the high number of individuals who do it. Also, there is isolation when you commit this “crime”. The RIAA might find out that someone from your house downloaded an illegal song, but they cannot definitely find out who. This is a big legal black hole, especially in most western countries where civil liberties are kind of a big deal (America may have gone to far west that it is now hitting Soviet Russia).

The big difference which makes it easier for people like the RIAA to sue you is that in American civil court you just need to found likely to have committed the act. This is opposite American criminal court where you have to be found guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

In the end it is a bit absurd that making a copy of something has such high legal ramifications. Someone stole my CD player from inside my car a few years ago. F them, now I don’t have a CD player. If they just stole this paragraph, I still have the paragraph.

[Source: Law and Order]

Inspiration:

[Source: Digg]