Jailtime For Copyright Violation?
March 14th, 2009 by ChrisAccording to a recent Wired article; Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are seeking 6 months in prison for a man who pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of uploading pre-release Guns N’ Roses songs.
I know it is making available and not downloading, but I always thought that copyright violations were (and should be) a civil issue (I mean it’s not technically stealing since the victim has not lost the original copy, although I am not making the case that it is acceptable). I suppose I feel that the punishment should fit the crime (in this case punitive damages and not jail time). After all it is merely copying data (the article calls it a misdemeanor) and not equivalent to a violent crime. I really hope that article got it wrong and they don’t really mean prison.
It got me wondering if maybe we (the USofA) have made too many things jailable offenses… Here is what I came up with (the data is a bit older as there is not a lot of 2009 data available):
United States Population (2007 est.): 302,200,000
US Jail and Prison Population (2007): 2,293,157 = 0.759% of population.
US Jail, Prison, Probation, and Parolees (2007): 7,328,200 = 2.425% of population.
There is a nice graph showing the increase through the years here…
[NOTE: Approximately 20% of the US population was below age 15 in 2007.]
Some Further reading:
According to Cecil Adams from the Straight Dope website; We (the USofA) have the largest documented prison population, in both absolute and proportional terms. China has the second largest total number, and Russia has the second highest percentage.
I suppose my question is… do we simply have the best and most effective police that catch more lawbreakers, do we prosecute too many innocents, or are our laws overzealous in what is a criminal offense? I don’t have the answers, but it is definitely an interesting set of statistics.
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