Prosecuting Online File Sharing Turns a Generation Criminal - Larry Lessig (nothing to add)

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Larry Lessig says it like only he can: Prosecuting Online File Sharing Turns a Generation Criminal - US News and World Report. He compares the war against file sharing to Prohibition - an analogy I have quite often used myself, and that makes a lot of sense

"Seventy-five years ago, Prohibition ended. Just 13 years after launching an extraordinary experiment in social reform, the nation recognized that the battle against "intoxicating liquors" had failed. Organized crime had exploded. Civil rights had been weakened. And an enormous number of ordinary Americans had become "criminals" as they found ways to evade, and profit from the evasion of, this hopeless law"

"But though I believe kids should not use the Internet to violate others' rights, I oppose these failed copyright wars: We have not reduced the amount of peer-to-peer file sharing. To the contrary, it has only increased. Nor have artists earned additional revenues from this battle—settlements don't go to the artists but to the lawyers. Instead, the single certain consequence from this battle has been one our government is strangely oblivious to: its rendering a generation criminal. A concerted campaign by rights holders, politicians, school administrators, and increasingly parents has convinced kids that their behavior violates the law. But that law breaking continues. We call our kids crooks; after a while, they believe it"

"It is time we recall what the nation learned 75 years ago: The remedy to a failed war is not to wage an ever more violent war; it is to sue for peace. Rather than continuing to sue to stop what no lawyer could ever stop, Congress needs to consider the scores of proposals that have been advanced by some of the best scholars in the nation to legalize this sharing while enabling other ways to compensate artists..."

I intend to contribute!

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