Re: [OT] The record industry, RIAA and US law
On 5/8/07, Johannes Wiedersich <johannes@physik.blm.tu-muenchen.de> wrote:
Michael Marsh wrote:
> RIAA crap aside, it's true that CDs are easy to steal and easy to
> sell. A good friend's apartment was burgled a number of years ago,
> and pretty much all that was stolen was his CD collection. Many of
> those were difficult to find at that time, and the total value was
> many hundreds of dollars, probably thousands ($15/CD adds up).
So, you believe the government should pass a law in order to prevent
stealing of CDs. That's a good idea! Let's suggest a law to enforce a
price of less than 2$/CD. This still gives the record industry and the
musicians a margin of 50% on sales and will take care that the number of
stolen and resold CDs is lowered by a much larger margin than by that
law quoted in the article.
Stealing is already illegal. Easy-to-move goods could still have a
moratorium on re-sale to give the victim a chance to recover.
Granted, we don't do that for cars, either, but maybe a couple of days
for *any* re-sale is reasonable.
Yes, sure we could make the world a saver place by just about
eliminating any personal freedom that exists. If a moratorium of 30 days
is justified for a 15$ CD, the same sort of reasoning would warrant a
moratorium of 3000 days for a $1500 car and a moratorium of 10 years for
a new car. The damage to society inflicted by stolen cars is certainly
larger than that from CDs.
30 days was the time in the proposed legislation, and is the only
reason I used that number. The price of the item is irrelevant to the
length of delay, in any case. It's purely about (in my opinion)
giving the victim the chance to notice the theft and act on it.
I'd suggest that the numbers of all the paper money that even Americans
sometimes carry around gets registered. There is an embargo period on
that, too, in order to make sure that the money wasn't stolen somewhere.
Who said anything about registration? Most people have far more value
in goods lying around than cash, and cash isn't generally what gets
burgled. For large items, people often *do* keep separate
identifying information stored somewhere safe, though.
Admittedly, the *right* thing for people to do is to have insurance
(homeowner's or renter's), assuming they can afford it. In my
friend's case, he hadn't thought to get renter's insurance, and
realized after the fact that he should have. Lesson learned. Some
apartments require it.
This idea isn't by any means my baby, and I have no intention nor
desire to be its champion. I frankly don't give a rat's ass one way
or another. I was just trying to point out that some aspects of it
aren't completely insane. Strawman attacks tend to piss me off,
though.
--
Michael A. Marsh
http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~mmarsh
http://mamarsh.blogspot.com
http://36pints.blogspot.com
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