Sadly the sort of crimes that carry capital punishment are not the crimes that carried out based on rational considered decisions. They are either crimes of passion carried out by rational people, or based on the warped perspective of irrational people.
The threat of facing a death penalty does not worry these people's mind when they commit the crime.
If a death penalty is to be used as purely a deterrent it should apply to crimes where the criminal has weighed up the pros and cons before deciding to do it.
Illegal downloading of movies, software, music is one such example of this. The downloader acknowledges that it is a naughty, but balances the reward of getting the item for free against the small chance of getting caught, and the likely small punishment – a written warning.
If a government introduced the death penalty for downloading it would stop it overnight.
Don't worry, no one would actually get the lethal injection for this.
Even the biggest multimedia corporations most affected by piracy would never want to see it carried out, but just the threat of it would put off most people.
The benefits of this in relation to the film industry would be that big budget movies would get their deserved income, while low-budget movie makers would be a bit more open-minded and offer their films for free online.
Effects – more people employed in film industry / cinemas; Studios get feedback on what films people really want to be made and can channel resources into this; independents can compete against the big studios.
Related Links:
Irresistable forces
Copyright and Piracy
Debating the death penalty
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