>or forbidding the government from enforcing copyright as a criminal offense (I'm not convinced it shouldn't be dealt with in the civil courts)...
This is a very good point. At the moment, because copyright is given criminal provisions, the big media companies get to have their investigation, their prosecution, and their punishment mostly all paid for by the taxpayers.
Yet, in the other leg of "IP", that being patents, there is no criminal provision, and so the owner of a patent has to bear the full burden of paying for the investigation and paying for the prosecution of any infringement.
So, if patents can work with only civil court procedure, where the attacker has to pay his/her full costs himself (1) why should copyright be "special" in providing for criminal prosecution?
(1) I'm skipping over "loser pays" concepts, because even with "loser pays", the attacker still has to pay up until the point they finally win in court before they get any money back. They don't get free, government tax funded, assistance right from the start.
This is a very good point. At the moment, because copyright is given criminal provisions, the big media companies get to have their investigation, their prosecution, and their punishment mostly all paid for by the taxpayers.
Yet, in the other leg of "IP", that being patents, there is no criminal provision, and so the owner of a patent has to bear the full burden of paying for the investigation and paying for the prosecution of any infringement.
So, if patents can work with only civil court procedure, where the attacker has to pay his/her full costs himself (1) why should copyright be "special" in providing for criminal prosecution?
(1) I'm skipping over "loser pays" concepts, because even with "loser pays", the attacker still has to pay up until the point they finally win in court before they get any money back. They don't get free, government tax funded, assistance right from the start.