Wednesday, June 26, 2013

[njhwqkun] Inflation decaying fines

Inflation in the monetary system causes the real value of fines encoded in law to decrease over time.  This causes a de facto "sunset provision" effect of some laws unless the law is periodically reviewed.

However, it is hard to imagine the day when inflation causes the $150,000 statutory damages per song for willful copyright infringement to become pocket change, allowing file-sharing to become practically usable. And copyright owners have shown themselves able to induce Congress to change law in their favor.

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