You need to catch up on the notion of intellectual property rights, there's a lot going on. For example, in my jurisdiction there was a celebrated case on the definition of a form of soil in a wine-growing district and whether or not a particular party could claim to be producing grapes grown in that district when they were alongside but not perfectly geographically within it. It was a lawyers' banquet that case.
If you're an author you have a choice, publish for nothing or sell your work and its rights to the highest bidder. Copyright isn't a gift from society, it's part of the warp and weave of property rights running through society. You can waive them if you wish.
Intellectual "property" is gift granted by society. You created something society considers useful, so you are given a monopoly over its production for a period of time. It is not as actual property, which is protected by our constitution; congress could just abolish all patents and copyrights at any time it wishes, it couldn't do that with your house without reperations. This is the general rule in common law jurisdictions and has been proven in many cases. I disagree with the expansion of the concept into the realm that it is a natural right like free speech; it is not. It is a gift.
The "right of the author" is another concept that's French. I disagree with it. It's the reason we have 140 year copyrights for coporations, instead of the 20 years that the founders originally provided. A baby born today should see a book published today in the public domain sometime in their lifetime, IMHO. However, merely because we adopted that lengthy term of copyright, doesn't mean we have adopted the concept behind it, that a copyright is the same thing as actually owning something.
If it were actual property then "stealing" it would be punished by the same laws as petty theft - a 100 dollar fine, and you have to repay what you owe. Or grand larceny - a 1000 dollar fine, and maybe a month or two in prison. Not an excessive and barbaric fine.
General deterrence - whether in a criminal matter or a civll matter - in sentencing/judgement, requires no proof, it's an accepted part of the process.
It's prosecution for crimes the state has no evidence of. Besides, there's a very specific clause in our constitution that prevents excessive fines. If a violation is so trivial and so common that you have to put out capital or excessive punishments in order to protect it, then something is wrong with the law and how it is enforced, not the people violating it. Filesharing hasn't cost the recording industry a penny. It's a drop in the bucket out of their profits. It costs society more to go after it than we gain out of the protection.
