by mg_ » Sun Jan 29, 2012 11:36 am
My criticism was more at the general banality of this.
The guys running the prison are still writing the rules so to speak. Megaupload's founder has, allegedly, committed a crime. From here on out, for the sake of my argument, I'll say he has been convicted. The problem I have with his prosecution ultimately rests on two issues. First, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other intellectual property laws have contravened a lot of presumptions our legal system makes implicitly. Namely, you don't have to be proven guilty but merely accused to have your life thrown into a shit storm, it will cripple your own business (re: megaupload) and costs too much money to prove otherwise.
The burden of proof has moved from the complaining party to the defender. The "presumption of innocence" is completely meaningless in the context of intellectual property. More over, the punishment does not fit the crime. A song purchased for $.79 on iTunes should not become $1500 per song penalties in a court of law. It's a farce.
My other major gripe with intellectual property law, and it has more to do with the corporate control of our legal and political systems, is that there is a separate legal standard for people with money and those without. The rules are non-applicable to the wealthiest and will continue to be so. The grand irony of the SOPA/PIPA acts were the very senators and representatives in our government were illegally downloading music. The rules aren't tailored to them. Likewise, when Kazaa/Limewire were in court and were able to get out from underneath the charges because they proved the RIAA and MPAA had illegally downloaded their own copyrighted software and used it to "hack" the users on the p2p network.
The United States' legal system is losing its grip on the fundamentals. Lon Fuller writes a lot about natural law, and he coined the phrase "procedural natural law/jurisprudence." It's a wildly fantastic view of the legal order, I don't necessarily agree with his bottom line, but I do agree with his 8 requirements of a functioning legal system needs to have procedural jurisprudence.
(P1) the rules must be expressed in general terms;
(P2) the rules must be publicly promulgated;
(P3) the rules must be prospective in effect;
(P4) the rules must be expressed in understandable terms;
(P5) the rules must be consistent with one another;
(P6) the rules must not require conduct beyond the powers of the affected parties;
(P7) the rules must not be changed so frequently that the subject cannot rely on them; and
(P8) the rules must be administered in a manner consistent with their wording.
He set it up in a good hypothetical, which I enjoyed.
My criticism was more at the general banality of this.
The guys running the prison are still writing the rules so to speak. Megaupload's founder has, allegedly, committed a crime. From here on out, for the sake of my argument, I'll say he has been convicted. The problem I have with his prosecution ultimately rests on two issues. First, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other intellectual property laws have contravened a lot of presumptions our legal system makes implicitly. Namely, you don't have to be proven guilty but merely accused to have your life thrown into a shit storm, it will cripple your own business (re: megaupload) and costs too much money to prove otherwise.
The burden of proof has moved from the complaining party to the defender. The "presumption of innocence" is completely meaningless in the context of intellectual property. More over, the punishment does not fit the crime. A song purchased for $.79 on iTunes should not become $1500 per song penalties in a court of law. It's a farce.
My other major gripe with intellectual property law, and it has more to do with the corporate control of our legal and political systems, is that there is a separate legal standard for people with money and those without. The rules are non-applicable to the wealthiest and will continue to be so. The grand irony of the SOPA/PIPA acts were the very senators and representatives in our government were illegally downloading music. The rules aren't tailored to them. Likewise, when Kazaa/Limewire were in court and were able to get out from underneath the charges because they proved the RIAA and MPAA had illegally downloaded their own copyrighted software and used it to "hack" the users on the p2p network.
The United States' legal system is losing its grip on the fundamentals. Lon Fuller writes a lot about natural law, and he coined the phrase "procedural natural law/jurisprudence." It's a wildly fantastic view of the legal order, I don't necessarily agree with his bottom line, but I do agree with his 8 requirements of a functioning legal system needs to have [i]procedural jurisprudence[/i].
(P1) the rules must be expressed in general terms;
(P2) the rules must be publicly promulgated;
(P3) the rules must be prospective in effect;
(P4) the rules must be expressed in understandable terms;
(P5) the rules must be consistent with one another;
(P6) the rules must not require conduct beyond the powers of the affected parties;
(P7) the rules must not be changed so frequently that the subject cannot rely on them; and
(P8) the rules must be administered in a manner consistent with their wording.
He set it up in a good hypothetical, which I enjoyed.