> I'm arguing, simply, that the RIAAs lawsuits are chock full of injustice: a flawed core conceit (that IP addresses can identify individuals), lawbreaking (unlicensed PIs) and piles of collateral damage (file-sharing grandmothers?).
The problem I have with this argument is that, despite all the legal chicanery, the chances are that most people the RIAA are going after really did do it. I understand the desire not to punish the innocent, and the reaction of the public when such stories make the headlines, but don't forget the other perspective: big media companies may adopt naive policies in an attempt to reduce piracy, but the guys running them are staring at 10 people, knowing that 9 of them are ripping them off, and listening to lawyers telling them they can't have any money back because no-one can prove to some practically unachievable degree of certainty who the 10th is.
> It's that I see no evidence that the public is particularly motivated by injustice to seek change.
This is a big problem with a lot of legal issues relating to modern technology and the new abilities it gives us. The implications of fundamental shifts like having the Internet or being able to store and analyse vast quantities of data probably won't be fully understood even by interested parties or expert observers for several years.
The average guy on the street will probably never appreciate some of the subtleties in any given area of law, even if it does affect him, because unfortunately people don't always think things through and research the facts before forming opinions. For example, how many people in any given copyright debate on a geek-friendly forum will ignore the fact that big business is mostly owned by institutional investors who run things like pension funds?
Mass copyright infringement is not a "victimless crime", and it doesn't just hurt "those big studios who were ripping us off for years". It hurts people's savings accounts, and pension funds, because when profits are reduced at the big media companies, the values of the investments goes down. At this point, someone traditionally trots out the old "illegal copy != lost sale" argument, again invoking something that while true some of the time is clearly not true of a lot of illegal ripping. And so the argument continues, with the critics using individual cases that appeal to emotional responses, wilfully ignoring the big picture because it's "just greedy businesses taking the hit, not real people".
This is why it is important for laws to be made by people who have spent the time to look at the facts, think through the implications, and then adopt a policy that is consistent with principles the general public support when fully aware of the implications. But it is then incumbent on those who make the laws to justify them on demand to a sceptical public, and right now this is where the copyright brigade are failing miserably.