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Here are 6 Democrats supporting a bill solely on behalf of the entertainment industry: Conyers, Berman, Schiff, Meehan, Wexler, and Weiner. If you want to verify they're all dems, look here.

Here are some gems from the proposed bill:

1822. Notice and consent relating to certain software
(a) Whoever knowingly offers enabling software for download over the Internet and does not
(1) clearly and conspicuously warn any person downloading that software, before it is downloaded, that it is enabling software and could create a security and privacy risk for the user's computer; and
(2) obtain that person's prior consent to the download after that warning; shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both.
(b) As used in this section, the term 'enabling software means software that, when installed on the user's computer, enables 3rd parties to store data on that computer, or use that computer to search other computers' contents over the Internet.''.

That one could have some positive implications for spyware, but I don't think that's the intent. I think the RIAA is trying to get a jump on theories made by some that new P2Ps will use granny's computer to serve files without her knowledge.

Here's another...

Whoever knowingly and with intent to defraud provides material and misleading false contact information to a domain name registrar, domain name registry, or other domain name registration authority in registering a domain name shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

5 years! For false info when registering a domain! And some say drug laws are bad!

It's time to start the letter writing...

Both Wired News and Yahoo News Australia are covering a bill which, if passed, would "make it easier to slap criminal charges on Internet users who copy music, movies and other copyrighted files over "peer-to-peer" networks", by making it a felony to share files. Penalties include "...include up to five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine." The bill, known as the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act of 2003 (ACCOPS), is sponsored by John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.). Contact information is on their sites.

Both Wired News and Yahoo News Australia are covering a bill which, if passed, would "make it easier to slap criminal charges on Internet users who copy music, movies and other copyrighted files over "peer-to-peer" networks", by making it a felony to share files. Penalties include "...include up to five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine." The bill, known as the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and Security Act of 2003 (ACCOPS), is sponsored by John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.). Contact information is on their sites.

Hey... we can complain on slashdot all we like. If you do not like what is going on politically then you can voice your opinion with your i) vote and ii) communication to your representative.

I've been involved with communicating with senators/housereps before and its amazing what can happen if a lot of constituents get together and complain.

The links you need are below! Remember, in your letter be polite but to the point. Say that you hope that they will not support Author, Consumer, and Computer Owner Protection and Security (ACCOPS) Act of 2003. Explain that destroying this nascent technology, P2P, which has so much to offer would be a serious error. And that the interests of the few elite (hollywood) and corporate interests should not prevail over public interests.

Links to email representatives

Berman's contact page

Conyers webmail page

Write your house representative

RIAA's going down. down. down. down.

Hey... we can complain on slashdot all we like. If you do not like what is going on politically then you can voice your opinion with your i) vote and ii) communication to your representative.

I've been involved with communicating with senators/housereps before and its amazing what can happen if a lot of constituents get together and complain.

The links you need are below! Remember, in your letter be polite but to the point. Say that you hope that they will not support Author, Consumer, and Computer Owner Protection and Security (ACCOPS) Act of 2003. Explain that destroying this nascent technology, P2P, which has so much to offer would be a serious error. And that the interests of the few elite (hollywood) and corporate interests should not prevail over public interests.

Links to email representatives

Berman's contact page

Conyers webmail page

Write your house representative

RIAA's going down. down. down. down.

Hey... we can complain on slashdot all we like. If you do not like what is going on politically then you can voice your opinion with your i) vote and ii) communication to your representative.

I've been involved with communicating with senators/housereps before and its amazing what can happen if a lot of constituents get together and complain.

The links you need are below! Remember, in your letter be polite but to the point. Say that you hope that they will not support Author, Consumer, and Computer Owner Protection and Security (ACCOPS) Act of 2003. Explain that destroying this nascent technology, P2P, which has so much to offer would be a serious error. And that the interests of the few elite (hollywood) and corporate interests should not prevail over public interests.

Links to email representatives

Berman's contact page

Conyers webmail page

Write your house representative

RIAA's going down. down. down. down.

Although Dean has been trying to pass himself off as a progressive on everything from the war to intellectual property, a lot of it is spin. His record in Vermont shows that Dean's no progressive , that he'll cave to corporate interests when it's politically expedient. The real progressive presidential candidate is Rep. Dennis Kucinich , Chair of the Progressive Caucus in Congress. Not only is Kucinich's progressive vision and record unambiguous, he has also refused to take any form of assistance from corporations, like law firms and financial firms, in contrast to the other candidates. That's why I trust him to maintain his position on intellectual property rights *after* he's elected.

He recently wrote an article titled "The Case for Public Patents," in which he explains how public patents and nonexclusive licensing of publicly funded R&D could lower health care costs in the US. He likens the system he envisions to "an 'open source' system that makes data and findings publicly available, instead of held secret as proprietary data." He goes on to say: "Open source is how the Linux computer operating system has become a competitive force against Microsoft's Windows." When's the last time you heard a presidential candidate talking about open source and Linux? This position is also indicative of his view on copyrights and intellectual property rights more generally.

He got a late start (February), but he's been making some real strides lately. The MoveOn primary and a long string of endorsements have given a real boost to his campaign. Also, the grassroots network of volunteers is growing exponentially on the internet , where it looks like the primaries will be determined.

That's basically the result of Clinton's success - he raced to the middle ground on many (economic) issues, and showed his party that that's where the votes are.

A ways down the road, look for this guy, Harold Ford from Tennessee, to make an impact. He's a Democratic rep from Tennessee, who has fans on boths sides of the aisle.

*obligatory note* I lived on the same hall as Harold in college, and he's a sharp guy who knows how to listen as well as how to speak (something far too rare among politicians these days).

Actually, HR 2601 looks pretty useful.

Sure, it won't put Mickey in the public domain. What it WILL do is put thousands of other works there, works that are currently protected but which the copyright holder has no interest in exploiting.

It also calls for the creation of a database of works under copyright protection. This would be a godsend for many industries and institutions. Librarians would be ecstatic. So would anyone wanting to create using someone else's characters.

Of course, it won't go anywhere unless you write your representative.

Not that this means I agree with you in your senseless flame of the person who put together this project, but I do have concerns when people do not themselves deal with issues. Creating jobs is creating something worthwhile, and I believe strongly that doing so will improve the situation for everyone.

This quagmire of job creation being undermined by unnecessary flames and those in work seeing the work of those who are not as worthless will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.

You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Write also to Jack Valenti, the CEO and chair of the MPAA, whose address and telephone number can be found at the About the MPAA page. Write too to Bill Gates, Chief of Technologies and thus in overall charge of systems like Windows NT, at Microsoft. Tell them that unemployment is a critical issue for you. Tell them that the talents of people are being wasted by not providing them with jobs. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done to improve the economy but that if unemployment continues to grow you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how unemployment harms all three. Let your legislators know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their policies concerning job creation.

You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.

Exchange is a closed and entirely proprietry system, and with good reason: Microsoft knows that opening up the system entirely would be one area where its desktop monopoly could be threatened. Some proof of this can be seen in that this is the one area on the Mac where Microsoft has let their software lag behind - users of that platform can get an excellent office suite, a good web browser, internet access, all from MS. But users of Exchange are limited to bug ridden clients that have to be run under Classic, and while upgrades to Entourage, MS's Mac mail/group system, are in the works to support some interoperability with Exchange, these upgrades are a long time coming and will only scratch the surface of what's required.

Meanwhile, Internet email standards lag behind and cause interoperating clients and servers to appear crude and unprofessional. As an example, the Internet's "rich text" standard is HTML, which is usually entered using a crude unintuitive user interface, appears completely different on different viewers, and requires embedded objects to be located on a central server pre-arranged ahead of time. Some objects, such as line drawings, have no universally supported internet standard for embedding anyway.

Ironically, the crude and incomplete standards offered for interoperability means that Microsoft can safely support, for example, IMAP and LDAP, knowing full well that it will not produce an environment with full interoperability and that users of these systems will appear less professional to their Microsoft-user co-workers.

With unprofessional and unfinished standards, and with the dominant platform being essentially closed, entry into the groupware area is difficult.

This quagmire of closed standards making professional interoperability unviable, but open standards being to unprofessional and incomplete to support and persuade system administrators to switch to will not disappear by itself. Unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.

You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Write also to Jack Valenti, the CEO and chair of the MPAA, whose address and telephone number can be found at the About the MPAA page. Write too to Bill Gates, Chief of Technologies and thus in overall charge of systems like Exchange, at Microsoft. Tell them that viable, professional, open standards for groupware are important to you. Tell them that the current system must change, and that either Microsoft's excellent standards need to be opened up, or that new open standards need to be put into the public domain, and that Microsoft needs to adopt these standards in order to ensure that groupware really is group ware, not limited to a "group" that finds sharing a single platform viable. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done by the IETF to create open standards but that if these standards remain incomplete you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how cl

http://holt.house.gov/issues2.cfm?id=5996

and contact your congresscritters...

It's possible for you to change things, but only if you pick up your phone and call your representative's office.

I actually checked many of those examples you linked to. Almost without exception they dealt with people who had consciously defrauded the government by hiding assets, etc. I'll state it again, there is a difference between not paying your taxes and filing false information.

You are lying. Those were DIRECT QUOTES FROM THE IRS, ON THE IRS.GOV WEBSITE. Not only that, the page title is "Significant Case Summaries: Nonfiler Enforcement". That doesn't say "Signicant Case Summaries: Fraud Enforcement". That page is here. Either you're lying, or you can't read. You want me to print the entire list?
Well suck it up. You owe it. I know you don't want to owe it. Neither the government, nor I care.

Quote from the Constitution, Article I, Section 9, Clause 4: Clause 4: No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken. The 16th Amendment changed that to allow for a "graduated" income tax, that is CLEARLY UN-Constitutional. You obviously do NOT know what you're talking about because you give no examples, no evidence, and no intelligent points to discuss and argue in a civil manner. I gave you multiple examples from the IRS dictating their powers, by way of specific cases with dates, names, and time sentenced, and you say the equivalent of "nuh uh!".

>Copyright law is supposed to protect the holder of the copyright, whether that be th eoriginal creator, RIAA member companies or the publisher.

Depends on the territory. In the US, the intent is explicit: To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;. I'll be explicit; US copyright was intended to protect authors from publishers, from having their work simply taken and copied without their permission. It's a sad state of affairs when we assume that publishers own the rights.

>Musicians are not work for hire simply because the RIAA member companies pay them advances on future royalties

Where did I say or imply that? Perhaps you should do some research.

Support Tort Reform!!!

American Tort Reform Association

The Economic Benefits of Tort Reform

American Tort Reform Foundation

Neally half a billion to MS for licenses & equipment in this one agreement alone? I'm glad I don't live in the US, but if I did I'd seriously consider contacting my congressman or senator about this deal. From the few details made public so far, it looks like the DoD really didn't negotiate that hard for the best deal for taxpayer $$$. I'd be more than a little steamed, considering that with a purchase of this magnitude there is a great deal of negotiating power, now that there are secure alternatives; power that apparently wasn't used. It almost sounds like a subsidy. Would Americans let this issue fade away without investigation?

I just used the form to send a message to The Honorable Mark E. Souder, which went something like this:

Tens of thousands of works, possibly 98 percent of copyrighted works published before 1940, are no longer commercially exploited but are still locked up behind copyright. Under copyright, these works are not only collecting dust but becoming dust, as the physical media in which they are fixed is slowly deteriorating. The Public Domain Enhancement Act would help move these works into the public domain, where they would best "promote the Progress of Science" as suggested in the Constitution.

Please join Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) in sponsoring the Public Domain Enhancement Act.

To Slashdot readers residing in the United States (citizens and lawful permanent residents): Rephrase the above message in your own words, look up your representative, and send it to him or her. If your rep has already signed on (e.g. Lofgren or Doolittle), change the end to something like "Thank you for sponsoring the Public Domain Enhancement Act." However, if you live in 45th California, don't expect much of a response out of Rep. Mary Bono.

I just used the form to send a message to The Honorable Mark E. Souder, which went something like this:

Tens of thousands of works, possibly 98 percent of copyrighted works published before 1940, are no longer commercially exploited but are still locked up behind copyright. Under copyright, these works are not only collecting dust but becoming dust, as the physical media in which they are fixed is slowly deteriorating. The Public Domain Enhancement Act would help move these works into the public domain, where they would best "promote the Progress of Science" as suggested in the Constitution.

Please join Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) in sponsoring the Public Domain Enhancement Act.

To Slashdot readers residing in the United States (citizens and lawful permanent residents): Rephrase the above message in your own words, look up your representative, and send it to him or her. If your rep has already signed on (e.g. Lofgren or Doolittle), change the end to something like "Thank you for sponsoring the Public Domain Enhancement Act." However, if you live in 45th California, don't expect much of a response out of Rep. Mary Bono.

Don't just sit back and hope this law passes. Write to your Congressman and your Senators and ask them to co-sponsor, or, failing that, at least to vote for it.

Just be glad they aren't looking to nail people with criminal charges. See: 17 USC 506 which refers to 18 USC 2319 which, in a simple summary, says that you can go to jail for up to three years (first copyright offense) or fined some amount of money (it's in another part of 18 USC and I don't want to find it) or both if you've shared music that ends up being worth $2,500 or more for the total number of copies shared. I dunno exactly how the language of this section is interpreted, but you could well end up in jail. And there's a decent argument for them seizing and destroying your computer as it'd be an instrument of copyright infringement if you were convicted. Who knows. Ask a lawyer.

Just be glad they aren't looking to nail people with criminal charges. See: 17 USC 506 which refers to 18 USC 2319 which, in a simple summary, says that you can go to jail for up to three years (first copyright offense) or fined some amount of money (it's in another part of 18 USC and I don't want to find it) or both if you've shared music that ends up being worth $2,500 or more for the total number of copies shared. I dunno exactly how the language of this section is interpreted, but you could well end up in jail. And there's a decent argument for them seizing and destroying your computer as it'd be an instrument of copyright infringement if you were convicted. Who knows. Ask a lawyer.

If we really had a massive terrorist threat including cyber-terrorism, why the hell are they adding this to the FBI's plate?

Did they already fix the problems within the FBI and among different agencies that led to the tragic failure to prevent 9/11 despite having all the info they needed?

Shouldn't the FBI investigate Enron, etc. and the role they played in influencing our government's energy policy with VP Dick Cheney in a manner that might've been illegal? Or investigate VP Dick Cheney's alleged fraudulent accounting practices while he was director of Halliburton? Given the HUGE relevance to this story after millions of us lost a big chunk of our pensions, why didn't we hear about this as much as even 1/1000th of Monica's story?

Oh, I forgot, we the public aren't supposed to care about things that actually impact us like (inflated gas prices or losing hard-earned pension funds)--we should only care about sex scandals of politicians because we're illiterate morons that believe corrupt politicians when they tell us they believe in the same God or religion as us since we don't have the ability to detect bullshit.

I suppose making govt larger and more intrusive is seen as a better strategy than fixing the specific problems that led to the failure to prevent it.

I lost someone who was working in the World Trade Center on 9/11 and I'm very dissappointed at how they've handled it BEFORE and AFTER that tragedy.

We're the most technologically advanced nation on Earth...we can do better than this.

I recently read about the bill H.R. 2517 that was introduced by fellow Texan Lamar Smith. This bill would require federal resources to be used to protect the interests of a few large multi-national corporations. The Justice Department would also have to develop (i.e. spend money on) programs to educate people on why they should support these multi-national companies.
Although I agree with the reason for the bill (stop software/music piracy), I cannot see how and why the federal government should be charged with protecting these companies' interests. The FBI has more on it's plate (with such issues as terrorism) and should not be spending valuable time, money, and resources on this issue. If the companies are upset about something being done, let them be the ones to figure something out. It is not, nor should it ever be, the government's responsibility to protect and serve the large corporations over the people. Please, do not support this bill.

Whenever there is legislation, I think I'll just post what I wrote, so yall can use it if you want, or just to give ideas.

Will any of you actually write your congress critters about this?

Just because his name is Lamar doesnt mean he is black.

From Congressman Berman's own web site, you can see how chummy he is with the Holywood crowd, and even the BSA thrown in for good measure. Quoting from his own summaries:

[Quote]

DREIER, BERMAN REINTRODUCE RUNAWAY PRODUCTION LEGISLATION

"...Congressmen David Dreier (R-San Dimas) and Howard Berman (D-Van Nuys) joined by a bipartisan group of 44 Members of the House of Representatives today re-introduced legislation that provides wage-based tax relief for film and television projects produced in the United States..."

REP. BERMAN LAUDS AGREEMENT BETWEEN RECORDING INDUSTRY AND TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES

"...Rep. Howard Berman lauded the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Business Software Alliance (BSA), and Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP) for their announcement of joint policy principles..."

[/Quote]

From Congressman Berman's own web site, you can see how chummy he is with the Holywood crowd, and even the BSA thrown in for good measure. Quoting from his own summaries:

[Quote]

DREIER, BERMAN REINTRODUCE RUNAWAY PRODUCTION LEGISLATION

"...Congressmen David Dreier (R-San Dimas) and Howard Berman (D-Van Nuys) joined by a bipartisan group of 44 Members of the House of Representatives today re-introduced legislation that provides wage-based tax relief for film and television projects produced in the United States..."

REP. BERMAN LAUDS AGREEMENT BETWEEN RECORDING INDUSTRY AND TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES

"...Rep. Howard Berman lauded the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Business Software Alliance (BSA), and Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP) for their announcement of joint policy principles..."

[/Quote]

From Congressman Berman's own web site, you can see how chummy he is with the Holywood crowd, and even the BSA thrown in for good measure. Quoting from his own summaries:

[Quote]

DREIER, BERMAN REINTRODUCE RUNAWAY PRODUCTION LEGISLATION

"...Congressmen David Dreier (R-San Dimas) and Howard Berman (D-Van Nuys) joined by a bipartisan group of 44 Members of the House of Representatives today re-introduced legislation that provides wage-based tax relief for film and television projects produced in the United States..."

REP. BERMAN LAUDS AGREEMENT BETWEEN RECORDING INDUSTRY AND TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES

"...Rep. Howard Berman lauded the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Business Software Alliance (BSA), and Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP) for their announcement of joint policy principles..."

[/Quote]

That reminds me: I've got no U2 mp3s on my puter, better go get some off Kazaa.

How old are you that you don't remember that Mary Bono is the widow of Sonny Bono (of "Sonny and Cher" fame), and not the Bono you've just mentioned?

:P

...is whether she plans to resign at her old job (you know, being in the U.S. House of Representatives) before taking on a new one involving a rather obvious conflict of interest.

And yet even something like red light cameras, which seem so obviously beneficial, can actually be used in unsafe and counter-productive ways.

If you want open source to get the kind of money pork barreling gets, lobby your Congressman. Crikey, it is astounding how easy it can be to get your Congressperson to do something, as long as you get off your kiester and do it. Tell your Congressman that you, and list as many of your friends as possible in a petition, want open source used in government systems. Claim all the great reasons to use it, and make a production about it. If you want to impact a system you have access to, all it takes is effort.

When was the last time a politician asked what you thought

Provided you live in the USA: Right now.

It seems that a lot of so-called libertarians are lately going out of their way to prove the old canard that "Libertarians are just Republicans who want to look cool."

I say no to empire and no to militarism!!! Any true libertarian would believe that, or does ESR really want to go up against people like Harry Browne and Ron Paul. (Note: I used the small "l" libertarian, and Ron Paul is definitely that!)

I really wish he would just join the side he's on and register as a Republican (and prepare to become a Democrat when the neocons switch sides again.).

Actually, most of thoose weapons were french, not American. Beyond that, they were given to him because Iran was threatining to use them.

The plain fact is that the US did supply Saddam with both chemical and biolgical weapons. And the US made clear to Saddam that it had no objections to him using them in the 1980s -- neither against the Iranians, nor against the Kurds. And the reason was not because the Iranians were going to use them. It was much simpler than that. The Iranians were going to win, and the US was happy for Saddam to do anything he could to stop that. (It's also interesting that after Saddam invaded Iran -- at US instigation -- the US condemned Iran for its aggression. Goebbels would have been proud.)

After all, trade liberalization did nothing for Europe right? I mean it's not like all of the governments of Europe pre-WWI and WWII were brutal monarchies and dictatorships. It's not like Japan benefited at all from reform of their society post WWII correct?

Where did you get the notion that democracy only arrived in Europe after WWII? There were more brutal dictatorships in Europe after WWII than before it. (Remember Poland? Hungary? Czechoslovakia? All democracies in the 1930s. All abandoned to Stalin in the 1940s.) Quite apart from the fact that democracy only truly arrived in the US following the civil right movement in the 1960s. A black kid in Alabama in the 1950s might as well as been living in a "brutal dictatorship" for all the protection he was given under the law.

On the free trade point, Germany and Japan were rebuilt through long-term commitment to creating a functioning civil society, not by forcing them to open up their markets to international competition. I don't recall that the Marshall Plan came attached with conditions requiring free movement of capital or removal of trade barriers. Those ideas came after monetarism killed off Keynesian economics in the 1980s.

Free trade keeps America rich, but free trade never made America rich. America became rich by carefully protecting its fledgling industries in the 19th century, then unleashing them on the world once they'd reached maturity. Today's developing countries should be allowed to do likewise.

No money ever moved from the CIA to the Islamic group that Bin Ladin was in. Certainly no money after Al qaeda was created. Please do yourself a favor and go read a decent book on Al Qaeda or the Taliban. I suggest "Taliban" or "Jihad.

Maybe you should read Unholy Wars by ABC journalist John Cooper: "Delighted by his impeccable Saudi credentials, the CIA gave Osama free rein in Afghanistan." You might also like to read what US Congressman John Paul (R, Texas - hardly a liberal) has to say on his house.gov website: "Bin Laden himself received training and weapons from the CIA, and that agency's military and financial assistance helped the Afghan rebels build a set of encampments around the city of Khost. Tragically, those same camps became terrorist training facilities for Bin Laden, who uses some of the same soldiers our military once trained as lieutenants in his sickening terrorist network. Our heroic pilots are now busy bombing the same camps we paid to build, all the while threatened by the same Stinger missiles originally supplied by our CIA."

The DMCA is applied as a 400 pound gorilla, or rather, a 4 000 000 pound sterling gorilla: nobody that the DMCA is used againt has the resources to do the legal fight. The DMCRA doesn't help that; you have to use your day in court to demonstrate that your use falls under the DMCRA. The 400 pound gorilla can still intimidate you into giving up.

The Brownback bill allows the FTC to stop technologies before they can be used as a threat, so the DMCRA is never an issue, and the 2600s of the world don't need to spend way too much to assert that they didn't do anything wrong.

Perhaps a compromise: the FTC can declare DRM technologies to be "overreaching". Overreaching DRM may still be sold, but DMCA protections do not apply, only traditional copyright protections. (The provisions of the DMCRA then become redundant.)

This needs some work, but may be an idea.

Oops. I was thinking of the DMCRA when I posted this.

Oops. I was thinking of the DMCRA when I posted this.

There's also Zoe Lofgren's BALANCE act. I tend to be as cynical as the next guy when it comes to my expectations of Congress to watch the interests of consumers, but there are a handful of folks there who seem to get it.

Ultimately, whatever the lobbyists are pumping in, the one thing corporations don't have is the vote, and as consumers at large become aware of what's going on, I bet you will see more Congresspeople under pressure to come around to "our side".

Perhaps with Rep. Rick Boucher's DMCRA bill in the House, maybe our government isn't being as shortsighted as they have been in the past. Maybe the rumblings of consumers (read, voters) will outweigh the cash in the pocket from the **AAs.

Mike

If you REALLY care about this, and you're a U.S. citizen, don't just sign an online petition - write (or at least call) your Congresscritters. The websites for the House of Representatives and Senate will both help you immediately find who your representatives are and how to contact them.

Copyrights and patents are protection against strangers. Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with. From a legal standpoint, contracts end up being far stronger than anything you could do with copyrights.
In other words, all of us that never had the misfortune of dealing with SCO can Linux ourself half to death.

Or in other words, they haven't a clue what Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks and Trade Secrets are.
I would suggest this book.
Or perhaps they could check this out.

Her words, just like her music, are not entirely hers to begin with. The language she uses and the music she makes is based on the language her predecessors used and the music her predecessors made. "giving what was not yours to give" is not an original phrase and neither is her music. This may contradict everything our Western culture says about knowledge and music, but what was given to her -- was not for hers to keep.

• Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla.: enemy in favor of RIAA/MPAA hacking your computer
• Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla.: enemy taking money from Disney

• Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla.: enemy in favor of RIAA/MPAA hacking your computer
• Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla.: enemy taking money from Disney

"Joining Wexler as co-founder of the caucus is Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., who helped author a note last fall to 74 fellow Democrats assailing the Linux open-source operating system's GNU General Public License as a threat to America's "innovation and security." Smith's Ninth District includes the Seattle surburbs near Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters."

Gee...anybody want to bet that Microsoft has given this guy campaign money? Anybody???

Oh and don't worry about him ruining everything else in the world...(from his website)
"Adam Smith led the effort to establish a pilot program at the National Defense University that will identify and find solutions to the DOD's technology needs."

The parties need to get their money from somebody, and that "somebody" is definitely not: The People.

Not everyone. The only congressman worth a damn, Ron Paul, gets 96.9% of his contributions from individuals. As a comparison, my congressman only gets 44% from individuals.

I applaud the recent passage of campaign finance reform, which bans the use of soft money and will begin the process of returning control of the federal government back to the people rather than the special interests. I sponsored the House version of this bill, which bans all soft money donations to the national political parties -- that means large unregulated donations from corporations, labor unions, and individuals. This bill also prevents independent groups from running television and radio campaign commercials right before an election, which are disguised as "issue ads," and requires more timely disclosures of independent expenditures.

These men have just become my three favorite people to hate, along with our non-president Bush.

Here's some addresses for you to do with as you please; normally I'd recommend writing them as I usually do, but their corrupt stupidity compels me to not care if you DDOS them, spam them, or whatever:

Rep. Robert Wexler

Rep. Adam Smith

Rep. Tom Feeney

Oh, and if you haven't already, try joining the EFF.

Corporatism getting way out of hand. It's getting scary as hell if you ask me.