Quote:
Originally Posted by Ignitionnet
The cost estimate is from the same straw man school as the entertainment industry claiming that piracy costs them a certain amount, the jail sentences are well deserved though it does vex a bit in general how crimes against corporations seem to be punished more than crimes against persons.
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The problem is, it's hard to estimate the costs as no one truly knows how many people would have paid for the cable tv legitimately. It's all very well saying that vm were losing (say) £50,000 a month because there were 1,000 dodgy boxes hooked in to packages worth £50 a month, but no one knows that all of those 1,000 people would have paid the £50 a month (in fact it's a fair bet that a lot of them wouldn't). The same as the record companies claiming that someone running off 1,000 copies of U2's latest Magnum Opus/Great Album/Good Album/Dirge (delete as appropriate) has cost them 1,000 sales. There's no evidence it has.
I sort of agree with your comment about punishment of crimes against corporations against crimes against people.
To me, a crime against a person is far more serious, but it's worth remembering that depending on the seriousness of the crime, a crime against a corporation could, if it causes severe cashflow problems, cause a lot of employees to lose their jobs, so it has the potential to affect a lot of people.