No, because far more people are caught littering than are punished for filesharing. Proportionally, I'd bet it works out similarly.
It is not the fault of any individual offender that more people are not caught. Therefore, the proportion of people who are caught should be completely irrelevant to the actual damages awarded.
Suppose I decide to live in the ghetto and leave my house unlocked every night. In one year, my house is robbed four times. My TV, computer, sofa, and new computer (each valued at $500) are stolen on these four separate occasions. Three of them get away, but the police find the guy who stole my sofa and I sue him for the damages. Now, do you think it's fair to fine him four times as much because the other three guys got away?
RightinNYC said:
So a party should be able to violate the rights of another party simply because it's not a huge deal? Say that the penalty for shoplifting was that you just had to say sorry - why would companies even stay open for business?
That essentially IS the punishment for shoplifting at many retailers. Wal-Mart, for example, has an explicit policy (which they try to keep quiet) that if they catch someone shoplifting less than $25, they won't press charges unless they've caught this person before. Yet Wal-Mart does pretty well.
Furthermore, I am unaware of any store where shoplifting $1 of merchandise has resulted in a successful lawsuit of $80,000. Most of the time they'll just kick the person out of the store and tell them not to come back...which seems like the reasonable course of action.
RightinNYC said:
The purpose of these laws is to deter people from conduct where the actual damages are small individually, but huge in the aggregate.
Then that is a reason to prosecute or sue more offenders, and/or go after the big fish. Not to impose absurd penalties on a few unlucky small-timers who ARE caught.
RightinNYC said:
Of course not, and I don't think littering is $500 egregious either. But that's not the purpose of the law.
Then why have differing punishments for crimes at all? The purpose of ANY penalty (criminal penalty or punitive damages) is to deter the action. Why not just fine everyone who does anything illegal $1.9 million?
RightinNYC said:
Then you will have a system where the companies will effectively have no recourse whatsoever. See the shoplifting example above.
And that is a bad example because companies essentially DON'T have any recourse for small scale offenders, yet shoplifting is not a major problem.
They WILL, however, prosecute major shoplifters. Which brings us back to this example: Why doesn't this record company sue someone who downloaded thousands of songs and allowed thousands of other people to download the songs from him...instead of someone who just stole $24 worth of merchandise? That would actually be cost-effective for them.