what is the punishment for theft?

results from a DMCA

[Concordia seo]

We had someone steal an article from our site and use it on theirs, so I wrote up a DMCA infringement notice and sent it to the ISP, cc the website owner. The website owner removed the material in less than 24 hours, before the ISP even notified them. Although I'm glad the stolen content is gone, is that all that happens? Shouldn't these people be punished some way besides just making them remove the stolen content? If I report them to Google before they have a chance to remove the material, can they be stripped of their pagerank?

[beren]

I doubt it. You could sue them in a civil lawsuit, but most people don't go to the trouble. If you do, you probably won't get much money at all.

It is very easy for people to get away with copyright violation, and the web has made this type of theft very common. The offending websites just take down the material when pressed and move on.

I never send DMCA letters to the website owner. First I send them to the search engines (Google, MSN, and Yahoo). Unless they are running Google AdSense, in which case I send the letter to Google AdSense only. If all these methods fail, then I send a letter to the ISP.

[BigDave]

Why should "punishment" be inflicted just on your say so? If you want more than the DMCA provides, then take them to court, where infringement claims (it's not theft) belongs.

All the DMCA takedown is intended to do is to stop the infringement, it is not intended as any sort of punishment.

Even if it was criminal instead of civil, it would still be the courts, not the cops, that decide on "punishment".