[cogman10]

> Copyright is a property right. It is not unreasonable for theft of property to carry the possibility of criminal charges.

Property theft and intellectual rights theft are two very different things. If I steal your car, you are now out a car and the use of a car. If I steal a copy of your artwork, you still have that artwork and can still sell copies of that artwork. I only start impacting your bottom line if I start selling copies.

To the extent you are impacted by a copyright violation, you can be made whole with a market rate payment for the copies created and a penalty. That's what civil law is for.

Wage theft has a much bigger negative impact on people's lives yet it's basically never criminally prosecuted. So why should copyright theft ever be criminally prosecuted?

> Also note that cable theft (e.g., the physical tampering element) can damage emergency communication lines and can create dangerous electrical problems.

Fair point, though I can't see why we'd punish that more harshly than we'd punish unauthorized digging (which is typically just civil to replace damaged lines.)