fkeel:
wanderson:
- No one has been, and no one will be charged with violations of those laws for 'fair use' because all parties understand they would loose, so despite the stupid law they are not criminals
you hope. we have no guarantee of that.
[/quote]Yes, but is a reasonable belief. As I mentioned in the previous post, in the U.S. we have jury trials. I find in unlikely that anyone in the U.S. would be convicted of violating the DMCA for what is also regarded within the law as 'fair use' (I frankly doubt anyone would be stupid enough to push such a case). But even if that happens, I find it very unlikely that a jury would convict.
fkeel:
wanderson:
- Those fines are fair by definition. After all we don't let murderers, rapists, etc.. define what would be their fair punishment.
This I find questionable. I mean any fine is arbitrarily established. In Texas, I believe you have the death penalty. In most of Europe this is considered barbaric. I am not implying judgement here - I just mean to point out that even the way murderers and rapists are treated is open for debate. Saying a fine is fair by definition assumes that there is some higher moral authority who has the right to decide on what a fine is. I believe that is wrong.
Concerning fines for data-sharing, you can imagine that there are very strong political lobbies putting pressure on politicians. I do not believe that lobbyists who are trying to have stricter convictions for rapists have even a fraction of the power that lobbyists going after file sharers have. (before you ask... I dont know that as a fact. This is simply my assumption, as there is no group with an economic interest in prosecuting rapists.)[/list]
As a society, Europe has decided that things such as the Death Penalty are not fair. The U.S. has (at least the civilized parts of it :)) The same is the case for these criminals who are claiming their punishment for theft is not 'fair'. Our society has established that it is fair. And unlike Europe (or at least Germany from what you told me), we have at least one more check and balance to ensure that 'fairness', a jury trial.
We have jury trials, because the system was designed to allow for jury nullification. A concept, where the judgement of your peers is capable of saying, "You may have broke the law, but we don't think the law is fair, so we are not going to let you be punished by that law."