Howard Berman Talks About P2P Piracy Prevention Act

An anonymous reader writes "I know Rep. Berman is not held in high regard on Slashdot, but he has posted an article on Findlaw where he discusses his self- help for P2P piracy bill. He has not convinced me that this is about preventing theft, rather than preserving old business models, but the bill does appear to have a lot of safeguards built-in." I'm confused about what measures Berman believes would be acceptable, after reading the many disclaimers here.

Comments

Berman doesn't talk about money he has taken....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

From the TV/Movies/Music industry.

Yeah baby, our boy has sucked on the Entertainment tit for ..

Ready for this?

$1 9 4 , 6 4 1

He is going to lie at every chance possible because like ALL politicians, Republican or Democrat, he walks whatever line pays him money.

There are no exceptions, Berman is quite literally full of shit and acting only in the best interest of his masters.

Re:"Old business models" QWZX

[seanadams.com]

The truth of the matter is, I just don't want to pay for anything whatsoever.

Alright, I'll feed the troll.

• Do you relish the fact that you can't hit fast forward to skip the advertisements and copyright warnings on DVDs which you've rightfully purchased?
  
• Do you think that the RIAA has the right to impose the cumbersome, fragile CD format on everyone, by attempting to restrict more advanced, convenient means of media storage and playback?
  
• Do you enjoy being forced to watch commercials on your $50/mo cable TV service?
  
• Would you prefer that your computer be artificially restricted in what it can and can't do, as opposed to being a general-purpose device whose capability is limited only by the imagination of software engineers?
  
• Would you like the federal govermnment to pass laws which restrict you from loaning your favorite book to a friend?
  

If you answered "no" to any of the above questions, then you are a troll and a fucking hypocrite.

Re:Bottom line is...

[JetScootr]

Actually, they can constrain what you do with computers. I'm a programmer. When I got into this biz in 1979 I could write any old damn code I needed to do anything I wanted to do with computers. But now I can face federal jailtime for doing things like trying to figure out a file's format or how to interface two pieces of hardware. Current laws make many things programmers need to do illegal. The DMCA makes criminals of virtually ALL programmers who venture outside of the database into the computer at large. You simply can't do these things anymore without breaking the law.
"it will start again in a garage" - no it won't - they are busy illegalizing any kind of homebrew, do-it-yourself, build-a-better-mousetrap kind of innovations that created the computer revolution in the first place. Berman's law is the latest and worst in a long line of this.