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Originally Posted by xepherys
Let's get a real-world, material version of this. Let's say... murder.
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What?
First of all, software piracy and DRM
is a real-world, material version. Either way, your observation doesn't quite work.
Okay, so DRM doesn't really work. Fine. So what next?
The Canadian government has recently tabled a
new copyright bill. While it's still rough around the edges, it's a step into the right direction: it puts restrictions on the penalizations to end users. Instead of a maximum of $20,000 per
illegal item, it's $500 per
infraction.
Another step into the right direction is that they explicitly states that ISPs abide by the notice-and-notice system when illegal content is transferred.
It also imposes stiff penalties to those who upload illegal content (ie. the "real" pirates).
The only big problem is the blanket prohibition on circumvention of protections, which is related to this thread and Securom. For example, even if you are a legal owner of the software, it is illegal for your to break the security if something goes wrong with your attempts to unlock it. Hrm.
Generally, you can have as many copies of your legally owned material as you want on your devices, so long as you own said devices.
Anyway, I think this would help target pirate activity if it could be enforced (which it can't, really), but it's a step in the right direction. This issue has been sitting around with no legal updates for over 10 years.