[Cdn-DMCA] CAAST calls for review of piracy penalties

[Tom Trottier]

I don't think that the benefits of social programs or Open Source 
software are harder to quantify. But they won't be found if people 
don't look for them. 

Fines on stealing proprietary software makes open source s/w way more 
attractive in obvious ways: expense and hassle.

Tom

On Tuesday, June 11, 2002 at 9:26, Kal Lin <canada-dmca-
opponents at flora.org>
wrote re "Re: [Cdn-DMCA] CAAST calls for review of piracy p" saying:

> On Tue, 11 Jun 2002, Russell McOrmond wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> >   I am in support of having the fines be higher.  It would encourage
> > businesses and citizens to fully look at the costs of proprietary
> > software, and adequately evaluate the alternatives.  This is the
> > basis of the http://www.stay-legal.org/ campaign.
> 
> 
> Last night CBC radio 1 at 9:05pm, the IDEAS show was about
> crime and punishment.  I didn't listen to it but heard second
> hand some of the arguments.  Two ways to reduce crime are:
> 
> 1) tackling the social problems like poverty;
> 
> 2) harsher punishments.
> 
> Studies have found if you are only interested in reducing
> crime then 2) is more cost effective.  Jails are expensive
> but not as expensive as social programs.  Politicians also
> like 2) because the average person can see the correlation
> between harsher punishments and personal safety.  The benefits
> of 1) are much harder to quantify.  Most people find it
> difficult to see how having more members of society as
> productive law abiding citizens benefits them.
> 
> What does this have to do with harsher piracy penalties?
> It's like 2).  The goal is to make using proprietary software
> to produce more proprietary software cost effective.  Whereas
> free (as in libre) software benefits society in many ways which
> are harder to quantify.

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