When Punishment Becomes a Misplaced Institution
A Critical Examination of Copyright Criminalization from the Perspectives of Human Rights Law, Institutional Economics, and Legislative Legitimacy In the legal architecture of intellectual property, copyright has long been regarded as the cornerstone of the creative incentive regime. Its institutional purpose was originally rooted in the provision of exclusive rights as a mechanism to ensure economic reward for creators, thereby stimulating cultural production. However, when copyright protection shifts from being an incentive-based private right to a justification for the exercise of state punitive power, the normative foundation of the system becomes destabilized. What was designed as a private right is then recoded as a matter of public order, demanding criminal enforcement. This dual posture—civil exclusivity on the one hand, and criminal sanction on the other—leads to a deep structural tension between private appropriation and public punishment, thereby violating the proportionalit...