Schwarzenegger's De-Termination

There's an unintentionally funny story on Yahoo News entitled "Schwarzenegger Calls for Tougher Piracy Laws." Here's my favorite passage:

 


A journalist at a news conference presented Schwarzenegger with a pirated DVD of his "Terminator 3; Rise of the Machines," bought from a Mexico City street vendor before the film was even released in the country.



"We need stricter laws so that the people who do this (piracy) are treated the same way as somebody who steals something," said Schwarzenegger, who is considering running for governor of California.

See, most peer-to-peer file traders, if caught, would probably prefer the penalties directed at people who steal a CD from a terrestrial store to the kinds of threat-induced settlements and proposed penalties now pursued by the music industry. Suffice it to say, not many CD shoplifters are doing hard time. But if Conyers and Berman have their way, or more properly, have the RIAA's way, a single upload might trigger five years in the stir.
The bill is filled with fuzzy math, too. Like this:

The language of the proposed bill states that "For purposes of section 2319(b) of title 18, the placing of a copyrighted work, without the authorization of the copyright owner, on a computer network accessible to members of the public who are able to copy the work through such access shall be considered to be the distribution, during a 180-day period, of at least 10 copies of that work with a retail value of more than $2,500."

OK, leaving aside the fact that most downloaders secure single songs, let's treat each download as if it were a whole CD. And let's assign the full retail price of $19.99 as the value of each CD. Ok . . . let's see . . . that's 10 times $19.99. I get a retail value of $199.90. Somehow, Conyers and Berman arrive at a valuation 12.5 times higher then even my liberal estimate.

Relative to Conyers and Berman, Schwarzenegger's offering a pretty good deal.