July 1, 2003
)
Japan's new era of digital shoplifting (Sydney Morning Herald, 7/1/2003)In high-tech, gizmo-rich Japan, mobile phones able to take digital photos have fast become mandatory accessories. They have also quickly become the latest tool for a new crime - digital shoplifting.
The crime is deceptively simple. In the crowded bookstores, the digital shoplifter is deftly able to record images from magazines to be viewed later.
Japan has a long tradition of allowing people to leaf through publications, a tolerance made easier because thumbed copies can be returned to the publishers.
I understand Japanese Senator Norin Hatch-u is promoting a plan to have magazine racks electronically destroy any cell phones that snap pictures in their vicinity. Meanwhile, I'm heading to the library to copy the Encyclopedia Britannica before they realize their danger.
It's an intriguing quandary: how do you address $1 torts with a legal system in which it costs $10,000 to sneeze? Our legal system is competent at awarding billions to smokers harmed by their cigarettes and hundreds of millions to drunk drivers harmed by their car's proneness to crash, but how to address lesser harms? Perhaps record company shareholders and Japanese bookstore owners should just go eat at McDonald's, so they can experience a genuine tort worth some real money.