If I am a thief and I know I'm just risking one year in prison I may as well keep stealing. If I'm stealing I'm already a lowlife - Worst case scenario
If punishment for stealing was cutting my hand, I'd definitely not risk it.
Note: I'm not justifying harsher punishments for copyright infringement and I think an appropriate punishment for theft would be forced labor where the profits go to repay what was stolen and some more.
In a just world copyright infringement would not be theft: the only thing we should charge is whoever breached their contract with the source and redistributed the content.
It shouldn't be easy to persecute copyright infringement, it's a "natural tax" of the market: if your content is so popular you can't track who is redistributing you obviously made a boatload of money.
If punishment for stealing was cutting my hand, I'd definitely not risk it.
Note: I'm not justifying harsher punishments for copyright infringement and I think an appropriate punishment for theft would be forced labor where the profits go to repay what was stolen and some more.
In a just world copyright infringement would not be theft: the only thing we should charge is whoever breached their contract with the source and redistributed the content.
It shouldn't be easy to persecute copyright infringement, it's a "natural tax" of the market: if your content is so popular you can't track who is redistributing you obviously made a boatload of money.