If you accept the fact that making something illegal does not prevent it from happening, you may begin to realize how much of the legislation in the United States is completely broken.
Certainly, murder is a bad thing. If you cannot prevent it from happening, why make it illegal? The answer is simple: the cost to society for enforcing an anti-murdering law is probably less than the cost of not enforcing it. This implies that murderers will commit further murders than the ones they have already done. This also assumes that there are very few murders in a population. I would say that so far, anti-murder laws have been a good call. Of course, they’ve also existed since the dawn of time.
Okay, how about drugs? If you cannot make drugs go away by making them illegal, why even bother? Initially (and I can get behind this), authorities believed that drugs promoted illegal behavior and dangerous situations. Sure, PCP makes people dangerous, and acid can leave users completely senseless, endangering others. It also puts a strain on the healthcare system, since people who are clueless about drugs can often overdose, or dealers might lace drugs with bad chemicals. But in hindsight, the problem here is that the effect of drugs on society is probably just about as bad as the effect of drug enforcement. In fact, many would argue (particularly people who live in Mexico) that the “war on drugs” has been detrimental by comparison to the actual harm drugs have caused. If anything, the system should be regulated, not made illegal. An objective advocacy campaign promoting the healthy effects of NOT using drugs would be more effective than anti-drug enforcement.
And finally, how about online piracy? If we can’t make it go away by making it illegal, why is congress even bothering to review the SOPA? I offer two suggestions, both sinister. My conspiracy-theory suggestion is that the provisions of the bill that basically allow the US government to censor anything it wants are seductive to a power-hungry government. At least it can defend outright dictatorial actions as being “legal.” Or, my more-realistic but still sinister suggestion is that many of the politicians backing the bill have connections with, were paid by, or simply love Hollywood and the RIAA. They perceive passage of the bill as benefitting them during their time in office because of kickbacks from those industries. I could offer a third suggestion, which is that the sponsors of the bill genuinely think that censorship will curb first-time or casual offenders in the same way that serial numbers or activation for video games do. And while that may be the case, I go back to my point that enforcement will be more damaging to our society than the thing it is trying to prevent. And, going back to my original point, piracy cannot and will not be stopped, especially since most media is now consumed in a digital format. If piracy could be alive and well long before the advent of the digital age, you can rest assured that with computers capable of making perfect copies of IP there will be no stop to it. The best solution is not to swing the hammer trying to nail pirates, but to instead offer the first-time or casual would-be pirate a better alternative. Like Netflix. “Support artists” would be a great phrase for advocacy. Just saying.