Second, wouldn't it be reasonable for the bank robbers to request that they're not sentenced to death for robbing banks? Can't they argue the punishment doesn't match the crime?
- Taxes are too high
- Government service is too poor
- The government is not doing an adequate job of informing people how much benefit they get from paying taxes (Europe seems to do much better in this regard, based on reading HN comments from Europeans).
- The government is not transparent enough in how taxes are allocated.
Are you sure you understand the concept of democracy?
Also, the people who are supporting a referendum led form of government should consider that in most places, the majority of the population would advocate policies which may infringe on your personal liberty. I'm no fan of populism in my politics.
While I agree with your conclusions, the logic here is flawed. If everyone started shoplifting, for example, it wouldn't indicate a problem with the laws that people are now criminals.
(Sidenote: Only a small number of people are felons on account of copyright. Under US law, to be a felon you have to have been convicted of a felony.)
Yes it would. Laws are not “good” or “bad” in a vacuum; they’re just the written-down versions of agreed-upon social relations – specifically, agreed upon by whoever in the society has enough social and economic power (and in a democracy, votes) to get a law enacted and enforced.
At the point where “everyone” was shoplifting, we’d be in some kind of social situation where the strictures against stealing had completely broken down. This happens sometimes, for example in rebellions or disaster zones. When there’s a revolution and a mass of people loot, throw out, kill, etc. existing power-holders, it quite clearly “indicates a problem” with the previous set of laws in the society, no matter how vehemently those elites protest. Usually, in modern democracies, we have enough mutual respect and a sufficiently broad distribution of power that things don’t get to the point of complete breakdown of order.
In this particular example, where there are fines in the $100Ks for something that most people have done and don’t consider bad, there’s quite clearly a problem with the law.
> Under US law, to be a felon you have to have been
> convicted of a felony.
If I could copy a car for basiclly nothing I probebly would too.
You see, I never said copyright infringement was shoplifting, or related to shoplifting, in any way. Just because someone uses the words "copyright" and "shoplifting" in the same post doesn't mean that they are saying copyright infringement is shoplifting.
In my above post shoplifting was only an example. My post makes just as much as sense if I replace shoplifting with murder and copyright infringement with cannabis possession. Or shoplifting with arson and copyright infringement with being left handed.
The underlying logic I quoted is what was wrong, not the categorisation, so stop jerking your knee.
If you replaced shoplifting with cannabis possession then the line "If everyone started smoking pot, for example, it wouldn't indicate a problem with the laws that people are now criminals" isn't nearly true. In fact, you could argue that alcohol is legal, while cannabis is not, is entirely because everyone does it.
1. I don't agree with the statement "shoplifting is necessarily immoral" so it makes no sense for my own argument to hinge on such a fact. 2. My argument does not only work for an immoral crime; it is merely illustrated by an example of a law people think is not wrong. Shoplifting is merely a counterexample to the logic "If X is a law that a lot of people break then X is a bad law". I do not take this on to conclude that X is not a bad law which would be begging the question. 3. The original logic was begging the question, not I. The statement "If X is a law that a lot of people break then X is a bad law" only holds if X is already a priori a bad law (and, even then, it requires a few more statements to actually work).
Perhaps if 90% of the population shoplifted, then any law against shoplifting would be bad. What is missing from the question is why the majority of the population would shoplift.
Your statement also brings up the question of whether something that an entire population (according to you) is doing should even be illegal.
See 17 USC 504 (c) for more information: http://copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#504