Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Peukert, Alexander --- "Why do ‘good people’ disregard copyright on the Internet?" [2012] ELECD 945; in Geiger, Christophe (ed), "Criminal Enforcement of Intellectual Property" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012) 151

Book Title: Criminal Enforcement of Intellectual Property

Editor(s): Geiger, Christophe

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849801461

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: Why do ‘good people’ disregard copyright on the Internet?

Author(s): Peukert, Alexander

Number of pages: 17

Extract:

8. Why do `good people' disregard
copyright on the Internet?
Alexander Peukert*


The person (perhaps even yourself) who feels deep remorse if she mistakenly
walks off with your pencil, who takes a wallet she found on the street, full of
money but with no identification, to the police, without a qualm or any thought
of payment, downloads copyrighted music off the internet or from a friend to
put onto her iPod. What is going on here? Some suggest ignorance of the law,
but that is generally not the case. She knows about copyright. Some suggest a
lack of enforcement, but that doesn't stop her from turning in the wallet. No,
something else is going on ­ some failure of a normally law-abiding, `good'
person to feel any compulsion to obey this set of laws.1



1. UNAUTHORIZED FILE SHARING: A
PERSISTENT PHENOMENON

The Internet is about sharing of information. Its technical structure
enables heterarchical participation of everyone connected. Unrestricted
and anonymous access to available information has always been a core
feature of `cyberspace'.2 This paper is concerned with a particular form of
Internet communication, namely the upload and download of music, soft-
ware, movies and other digitized content by private persons.3 File sharing




* Dr. iur., Professor of Law, Chair for Civil Law, Commercial Law and
Intellectual Property Law, Goethe University Frankfurt/Main, Germany; Cluster
of Excellence Normative Orders, http://www.jura.uni-frankfurt.de/peukert/.
1
Goodenough, O. R. and G. Decker (2007), `Why Do Good People ...