Britain has basically decriminalized internet piracy. The U.S. should, too.

Internet piracy is bad for the economy. It's also impossible to police.

Piracy
(Image credit: (Illustration by Sarah Eberspacher | Photos courtesy iStock))

Britain has made a bold move: starting in 2015, internet pirates will no longer be prosecuted for their file-sharing. Persistent file-sharers will receive warning letters, but according to The Independent "no further action will be taken." (While the government isn't calling it decriminalization, that is effectively what it is.) In the long run, this is the only sensible option.

A full 46 percent of Americans are copyright pirates, according to a 2012 study by The American Assembly at Columbia University, which means they copy content from CDs and DVDs or illicitly download media, including movies, music, games, and software, from peer-to-peer sources such as BitTorrent. That figure jumps to 70 percent among young Americans aged 18 to 29.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us

John Aziz is the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also an associate editor at Pieria.co.uk. Previously his work has appeared on Business Insider, Zero Hedge, and Noahpinion.