Copyright is the harshest law in the land
May 15th, 2007The laws that protect copyright are the harshest in the land. Particularly, they can carry significant jail sentences (10 years) and can have a huge dollar value penalty ($100,000) that gets multiplied by EACH illegal copy. Even if you agree that copyright should be enforceable (as I do), it’s astonishing to think that the punishment for copying songs from a family member could exceed that levied for a violent felony.
The Bush Administration is proposing the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007. Among other things, this law could make it a crime with a punishment of LIFE IMPRISONMENT if you use pirated software to provide a health care service.
The justification for such a punishment is that pirated software isn’t safe. The truth is that pirated software is usually just as safe as the non-pirated version that was copied. If there’s a bug in Windows: no worries. But if there’s a bug in someone’s stolen copy of Windows used by a hospital: life in jail.