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by icebraining 4895 days ago
Not all copy right holders have the financial means to sue for copyright infringement.

That might be a good reason for funding state-provided attorneys. It's a terrible reason for making it a crime.

2 comments

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.