A quick note on the differences of who pays the price of copyright infringements in the US and in Europe.

In the US RIAA and other organizations as well as the copyright owners pay the lawyers and people to track down infringers and they use the money they win from settlements to initiate more actions. So finally those who have (or in many cases those who have not) committed unlawful acts pay the price of enforcement.

In Europe copyright crime is pursued by the police and the prosecutors. Thus taxpayers pay the price of unlawful behaviour of some members of society. They pay for the extra resources necessary to pursue illegal activities and where resources are limited and resources are diverted from pursuing other crimes to pursue copyright infringers they pay the price in the form of rising crime-rate in other fields. In this latter case the cost of strict copyright laws might be the rise in other crimes. Well, well…