[LINK] On-the-spot copyright fines only for illegal traders?

[Adam Todd]

At 02:29 PM 16/11/2006, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>At 01:04 PM 16/11/2006, Craig Sanders wrote:
>>so, why do multi-billion dollar businesses like record companies get the
>>public to pay for their civil cases when the public can't?
>
>No case needed. On the spot fines don't come to court unless the 
>individual have deep enough pockets to do it.


You don't need deep pockets to defend a false proseuction on a criminal 
charge and pursuant to section 2A you can get all your costs back if it is 
dismissed.  So the State ends up PAYING for a false prosecution.

Then if you're pockets are deep, (probably not required either) you can 
then sue the state for malicious prosecution because they should have 
dropped the charges before they got to court.

Double win for you, double loss for the State, Tax payer pays the 
bill.  Tax payer gets upset at paying for incompetence, government gets 
pumeled and police get sacked.

Simple really.


>Think revenue raising. Fines go to the government, not the copyright owner.

Yes but are people going to willingly pay a Criminal charge on their 
record, which will prevent them ENTERING into the USA, UK and other places, 
as opposed to fighting the allegation if it is false?

Paying a parking or speeding fine which doesn't show up on your criminal 
record search upon entering into the USA is a vastly different thing to 
paying a criminal offence fine.


>Can someone shoot holes in this argument?

Did I dent it at all?