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Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

I must be misunderstanding your proposal, because on the face of it that seems to be so colossally ridiculous that I can't believe it is what you intended. Did you misstate your proposal?

There would be virtually no disincentive to infringement under that proposal. Why not just propose eliminating copyright?

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The disincentive is having to pay for the thing you pirated. Not to mention attorney fees if you decide to fight the charge.

Case 1: you decide not to pirate. You pay retail price.

Case 2: you decide to pirate. You pay 0 with above a 99% chance. If you do get caught, you can pay the minimal retail price over the last year.

What exactly do you see as a disincentive for choosing #2, since case 2 beats case 1 in all cases?

Not that I agree with his proposal, but youre assuming that someone wouldn't pirate something that they weren't willing to pay money for. That almost certainly isn't true for a significant population.

Not having to deal with court, which could be a significant time and/or money drain. I agree that that isn't a huge disincentive, though. I think that money and effort would be better spent going after producers of infringing content instead of users or distributors.

I think that making it harder to come by the infringing content by going after the people who produce it is a better way to fight this problem than going after everyone who wants to use it.

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