I don't understand why criminal copyright infringement exists. If there is no copyright holder to sue, then by all logic the works should be in the public domain, thus no copyright to begin with.
Not all copy right holders have the financial means to sue for copyright infringement. It should be a criminal offence, what is wrong is the level of punishment associated with different levels of infringement.
Providing state attorneys is a bad idea in general. You'll immediately get frivolous lawsuits everywhere if the attorneys don't have discretion to decline cases, and if they do then all you're doing is having the state prosecute a de facto criminal case where the penalty is a fine, except that you've unjustly reduced their burden of proof from beyond a reasonable doubt to the preponderance of evidence.
Having for-profit copyright infringement be a misdemeanor is not without reason. But it should have to be for-profit, i.e. actual money is proved to go into their pockets, not assumed to be for-profit based on circumstantial nonsense, and the penalty should be very low for first time offenders and no more than a year in any case.
I agree this should be a civil matter, but don't complicate matters like this. Typically, wronged parties with limited means are able to hire lawyers on contingency. That's true even if they're facing giant insurance companies that have hundreds of lawyers on retainer. The defendants in this sort of case are likely to have much shallower pockets.
I don't have the means to sue you for breaking the NDA I made you sign. Therefore it should be a Federal crime, and you should go to prison for up to 5 years.
There is no flaw in this logic. </sarcasm>
This is the second post I've come across which equates the move from Civil Law to Criminal Law with some sort of logistics. I.e. "It's difficult for people to sue, therefore it should be a criminal offense." I can't understand why people aren't taking into account the change in punishment.
People don't go to jail in Civil Law, but they do in Criminal Law. Why should the punishment increase just for logistical reasons?
It exists because it can be used to make money. Making it inexistent would mean someone would lose money, and as such this it's logical that this losing party opposes it strongly.
If there's will there's a way. If there's money to be made, there's will for it. After all, if we throw enough money at it there's enough will.
Some people rely their income on things like copyright. They have kids to raise, house to pay and so on. It would totally suck for them to be cut from the income.
Lots of purely civil cases revolve around exactly that. If we have a contract that says I'll do some work for you and then you'll pay me for it, but then you subsequently don't pay me, then I'm in exactly the scenario you describe. But then I have to sue you for the money in civil court — I can't get you sent to prison for it.