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

Still wrong

[r_j_prahad]

I do not care how many safeguards are built into this law, it is still nothing more than legalized vigilantism. The right to determine guilt and mete out punishment belongs in the hands of our justice system, and not in the pockets of billionaire movie producers.

This is wrong, wrong, wrong. Sugar coating poison might improve taste, but it will still kill you.

Re:Still wrong

[ender81b]

Safegaurds.. you mean like this right:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Oh that stinkin' Fourth ammendment.. it was useless anyways. Sigh.

still not good enough.

[garcia]

The bill specifically states that the safe harbor does not allow a copyright owner to delete or alter any file or data on the computer of a file trader. Thus, a copyright owner can't send a virus to a P2P pirate. Nor can it remove any files on the pirate's computer. Nor can it even remove files that include the pirated works. All it can do is impair the illegal distribution or reproduction of those works through a public P2P network.

While it may help to stop people from destroying your local computer's files it will NOT stop them from DoS attacking you?

They need to be held accountable for ANY and ALL financial damage that they do to the computer that was being attacked AND the computers around the original that were also being hindered by their attack.

While I agree that P2P have little use outside of illegal activities (outside of FurthurNET and the like) I don't think that these laws are the way to put a stop to it.

Nor do I believe that infesting the P2P networks w/poor files does it either.

I know that ATTBI was disabling users that were leaving movies in their shared folders (yes, ATTBI users be careful). I believe that going through the ISP may be the only method. If the ISP doesn't cooperate, uhh, sorry.

No proven case

[Blue Stone]

The fact of the matter is that the **AA, the copyright cartels, have not proved that their incomes, or the artists which they rip o.. er, represent, have been damaged by Kazaa et al.

Their shrieks and cries of doom, and destruction, on the contrary, echo their histrionic historical wailings, about every new media development under the sun, decimating their livelihoods.

None of that has come to pass.

Let a few truly independent investigations be run, on the claim that the copyright cartels have suffered loss that warrants such draconian laws, and then maybe, we can talk to them, and treat them as deserving of our "concern" (for want of a better term.)

At the moment, all we have is a bunch melodramatic control freaks, in a behaviour-loop, with no proven basis for their "concerns."
As such, people who know their track record (no pun intended) choose to treat them with the contempt they deserve, and will continue to deserve, until they stop lying, distorting, dissembling and duping, and come up with some independently verified, hard facts that merit that anything is done.

In my humble opinion.