By all accounts, he was affected by the outcome of a flawed system where the rules of physical media should no longer apply. No servers were hacked, no physical property trespassed, no malicious intent proven. The affected parties did not pursue litigation, but “stealing is stealing”, and concordantly he was prosecuted. And herein lies the problem.

We can no longer hold the laws of the physical over the intangible. It just makes no sense. Granted, this does not mean that there shouldn’t be any laws regarding electronic content. The intellectual property of the copyright holders must be respected. However the punishment system in this regard must be carefully drawn from scratch, because we’re not making sense anymore. Someone downloads a movie or a music album and everyone loses it. But when that same person goes to a library, and copies several chapters from a book? No one bats a single eyelash.

And the issue stems from the concept of potentiality. Someone came in and stole a CD from your store? Well, you just lost a sale, unfortunately. That same person copies the CD and distributes it through the internet? Very well, you just lost a considerable amount of probable sales. There’s a keyword there, and it is ‘probable’. Probability is just that; it’s chance. Punishment for theft should not be pursued over probability, but over certainty. It’s about time we stop having double standards and get our act together.