Copyright Infringement In the News

Lots of newsbits about copyright infringement today - let's mash them all together with some egg whites and breadcrumbs and see what we get. marklyon writes "The DOJ announced that they are planning to prosecute filesharers under the The No Electronic Theft ("NET") Act. John Malcolm, a deputy assistant attorney general, made the pronouncement at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's annual technology and politics summit Tuesday. Cnet has extended coverage." Reader M_Talon writes "According to this article on ZDNET the RIAA is using one of the DMCA's more nasty clauses...the right to subpoena an ISP for a suspected pirate's personal information. They want to force Verizon to reveal the customer's information, and Verizon is refusing on the grounds that the pirated material isn't on their servers." Reader MattW writes "Apparently some theaters are consenting to run anti-piracy ads before movies. After all, these are not a bunch of fat cats we're talking about -- piracy now threatens the livelihood of the rank and file workers of Hollywood. After all, the movie studios are having a terrible year, right?" Finally, the Washington Post (probably one of the last articles we post from their site, as they go registration-required) discovers spoofed files on Gnutella, and public radio is reporting that the RIAA will drop their suit against listen4ever.com, since it's, uh, gone.

Comments

Who decides if it's prosecutable?

[M-2]

From the ZDNet article on the DOJ's actions:

Under the NET Act, signed by President Clinton in 1997, it is a federal crime to share copies of copyrighted products such as software, movies or music with anyone, even friends or family members, if the value of the work exceeds $1,000. Violations are punishable by one year in prison, or if the value tops $2,500, "not more than five years" in prison.

So who decides if it's something they can proscecute? "I ripped the new Flopping GNoberts CD and put it on KaZaA!" That's an $18 CD, so it's not prosecutable until enough people download it to bring the total over $1000? It's another bad use of a law which can be easily abused to deal with the situation. This is the same sort of thing as the Kevin Mitnick case, where Sun claimed that he'd stolen $600,000 of source code... that they were giving away for free. I guess that Hillary Rosen and Jack Valenti thought the DoJ needed more exercise, so they got the guvmint jumping to conclusions again.

On the matter of AOTC downloading

[necrognome]

Yeah, I was one of the "thieves" that downloaded Attack of the Clones the day after its release, denying the movie industry of its precious profits.

Oops! I forgot to mention that I waited in line 3 hours to see it on opening midnight, and that I saw it 3 more times, including once on a digital screen. That's $40 for tickets (NYC prices). Yeah, MPAA, that download was one hell of a "lost sale."

Random wacky thought #2

[lightspawn]

I wish there was some kind of P2P network to only offer legal content, so that I'd be able to stay away from the crud promoted by the RIAA and its partners. Imagine being able to download gigabytes of completely legal music, which is already available out there but not so easy to find - or tell apart from the mainstream music. If you have a thousand hours of music, are you still really compelled to buy Britney's latest?