Willful copyright infringement is a rarely prosecuted crime, but it is still a crime. We have become accustomed to ever-greater levels of civil enforcement against infringers, but criminal enforcement against infringers seems to remain infrequent. Viewed through the lens of U.S. copyright law, your paper really asks the question of whether private parties or prosecutors should be able to strip internet access away from people for copyright infringement. I doubt that is really the point you want to drive at, but the references in your introduction to stripping Internet access as a punishment for crimes raise the question. I think the deeper question you are driving at is whether copyright infringement is the kind of conduct that can justifiably be punished by stripping a person of Internet access. I think it can fairly be argued that Internet access is so important to the exercise of well-established rights that stripping access is a punishment that does not fit the “crime” of infringement.

-- StephenClarke - 30 Mar 2010