I hope you enjoy your internet break. I taught myself to be able to disengage from the Internet for days at a time. People in university didn't understand how I could not answer their emails for days at a time. I replied, "It's easy if you remember that you survived childhood without a smartphone or a laptop." Though I suppose many people my brother's age were using computers by age 5, whereas the only reason I used one from the age of 4 was because Dad was one of the few people who own an IBM and a dot-matrix printer at the time. Oh, the days of Sopwith, Eggbert, and eventually Carmen Santiago in the U.S.A!

And even if they did know that about me, that doesn't stop it from being an uncomfortable trigger for THEM. So, yeah. I'm not the only person with rights and when I'm at someone else's house or blog, I need to think before I type. I think it would have been a different matter if I'd made the example on my own blog. Because then people can just opt out of visiting my blog if they find me offensive. But it's not fair to put someone through that when they weren't coming to my blog and I was a guest on someone else's.

I appreciate Joe not going to terror level orange over it though. He could have if he'd wanted to. It's his blog.

I also agree with you with regard to not punishing someone for someone else's crime. I think it could work out if there was a protocol where if the person didn't share a computer with others, they would lose internet for awhile, and if they did, they would be fined heavily. I absolutely don't believe in everybody being punished for other people's wrongdoings. It just seemed to me (and still does) that the threat of loss of Internet might be a good deterrent. Especially if it was enforced often enough that people felt it was a real threat.

But many people share one ISP and that does become a significant issue. If only everybody had their own computers and ISPs. lol

The three strikes thing really bothers me both legally and morally. Not that I think the U.S. is going to go that far within the next year or so, but I share an IP address with family because I have a disability and can’t live on my own. I pretty much depend on it for work. I don’t think I’m responsible for my collegiate brother’s behavior (I assume he’s downloaded games). The second our ISP pulls our service because of some draconian law, I’ll have the ACLU on the phone. But yeah, YMMV.

I'm also paranoid I might have hit some other nerve with the other part of my post that touched on the sensitive issue. But yeah. There is some stuff I don't know how to talk about because it's too raw for people. I forget that I had a time when it was too raw for me and just because I'm not still at that point doesn't mean other people aren't. What happened to me happened several years ago and there were mitigating circumstances which allowed me to get closure most women never get.

So if I was insensitive yet again, I apologize. That is not my intent. I'm just saying. I've been there too. I may process certain emotions differently. I don't know.

That's the world we live in. So it's not just a little thing to me. Taking someone's internet away for stealing to discourage the behavior, is something I'm 100% behind. You can also lose your license if you get too many speeding tickets. Even if you aren't endangering a single life, but just drive about 10 miles over the speed limit and get caught a lot.

I'm sorry you were raped and were offended, but I've been raped too. Maybe I process emotion differently than you, but both things felt like a personal violation to me. Piracy is a much smaller one, but it's like Chinese water torture. Drip Drip Drip. The rape was ONE day. And ONE experience. It happened, and it was awful, and it took months to be able to start to heal, but then it was over and I could. I don't call myself a rape survivor though because I refuse to label myself for life as a victim. (And I'm not saying that to be offensive, but the term "rape survivor" defines someone FOR LIFE by that experience and I refuse to be a part of that social mentality.)

But if I was given a choice to go back and experience that one awful day again and the emotional aftermath, or end up destitute someday when piracy got out of control and I couldn't feed myself, I would choose to go back and redo that day. Because it would be done and over and I wouldn't have to live in fear of losing everything some day because of selfish assholes who think stealing from me is cool.

Survival is the first rule. Rape is awful. But so is starving in a ditch. So is living in poverty. So are a lot of things. I would never try to diminish someone else's experience, but I won't let that one experience define me.

Either way though, the analogy was never meant to say they were "exactly the same" but merely to explain WHY some artists are so upset by it from the point of view of personal violation. Again, not everybody processes things the same way emotionally. Clearly it was too emotional a point to make. And no one could listen to the analogy without it hitting some personal hot button for them.

I'm sure a lot of the offense from those who were offended was because they were raped or someone they knew was raped and they felt that I couldn't possibly have had that experience or I would never use such an example. Well, they were wrong. I know what sexual violation feels like.

And I don't waste time chasing down pirates because it is POINTLESS. The second a torrent is stopped, another one begins. I'm sorry but unless the technology can actually be regulated, there HAS to be some kind of punishment for perpetrators of the crime that will actually put some kind of threat behind the idea of stealing other people's work. Nothing hits home like loss of Internet.

Obviously you are free to hold an alternate viewpoint.

Still, I was a lot more angry when I was plagiarized than when my non-fiction was pirated. Sure, part of it was the ease of consequences to the plagiarizer versus the pirater(s). Subconsciously, I don't like feeling powerless, and that probably had a lot to do with my different reactions. I feel like I can win against a plagiarizer.

With pirates, I know that the more I yell and scream about something I don't have control over, the more people I'm alienating.

I don't know the term limit for HADOPI or the Australian three strikes law. I do think that the punishment should fit the crime. Comparing content theft/copyright infringement/piracy with drunk driving is disingenuous — these people certainly aren't risking people's lives or their own, no matter how shitty it makes artists feel.

I think it's easy to get emotional about someone messing around with our expressions, our art. Part of my promise to myself when discussing creative property and infringement/piracy is to remove my emotions from the equation. I think appeals to morality and compassion work with politics, not with technology and the law. (I didn't say this in Konrath's blog, but the rape analogy was offensive. I'm a rape survivor, and content theft hits a completely different part of my mind than rape does, and they didn't feel at all similar to me. I think extreme analogies just don't work in these arguments.)

Part of the problem with current law is that we are talking about intangible property. People in general simply do not see it as having the same value, and they don't think of it as depriving the seller of the property — even though they do deprive them of profit.

We're just going to have to agree to disagree about three strikes. I cannot support such draconian measures, especially if the punishment costs far more monetarily to the perpetrator than the crime does to the victim. I've never agreed with the extensive fines the courts have awarded the RIAA for song downloads either, as they haven't deterred the offenses they intended them to stop. In short, I don't believe in harsh punishments for property crimes unless the courts can prove immense harm or loss, and I don't think they have in terms of digital infringement.

Without file-sharing, my voice-acting career would not have existed beyond a few friends listening to our podcasts. I never once found unauthorized downloads of our original shows, even though they weren't on torrents, because we offered higher quality versions on CDs and lower quality versions for free. Yet the website still made plenty of money for years and still does well. It would be incredibly unfair to ban or filter a type of technology because some people misuse it. I don't appreciate being punished for what other people do.

You have every right to be angry! It's of course your right to pursue pirates of your work, and I hope you're successful in stopping them. For me, I chose a while ago to spend my time on things that make me less stressed out.

I think if you were an author you'd feel differently. The reason authors get so crazy about it is because we feel completely helpless over the issue. There is nothing in place actively enforcing the law on the matter and meanwhile people are just running around stealing and distributing more of our work.

It's like spitting on me.

And pirates don't care. They don't give a crap. They just want to be entertained for free. No one who steals from me is my fan.