Slashdot Mirror
P2P File Sharing Could Cost You A Bundle
geekee writes "CNET posted an article claiming you could be liable for $250,000 in fines and up to 3 years in prison for p2p file sharing. This is due to an obscure law called the No Electronic Theft (NET) act passed in 1997 (signed by Bill Clinton). Although the Justice Department has not prosecuted anyone under this new law, some members of congress have asked John Ashcroft to begin prosecuting. In response to the request, John Malcolm, a deputy assistant attorney general, said to expect some NET Act prosecutions."
Just don't take my porn!!!
Long live heather brooke.
woot.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
(signed by Bill Clinton)
Under the new version of the bill, signed by George Bush, violaters will be declared "enemy combatants", will be stripped of all rights and will be held for life on the Guantanamo Bay military base.
I would go to jail for what I believe in.
But I do believe that theft is theft.
Everyone gets pissed off when someone threatens to take away their pirated music and videos.
If you want to make a backup of your music and videos fine, but don't share them out to other people to freely copy.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I'm moving to Russia where it's more free.
Of course, there's still the "pre-dawn-raid-and-seize-hard-drive" tactic which I've heard makes that moot...
(a) DEFINITION OF FINANCIAL GAIN- Section 101 of title 17, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the undesignated paragraph relating to the term `display', the following new paragraph:
`The term `financial gain' includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.'.
Very nice. I just traded some recently-read books with my mom. Does this mean I'm gonna fry (she'll probably turn me in 'cuz she's like that)?
The problem with giving people freedom and liberty is - you never know what they're actually going to do with it.
You know, like invent a decentralized p2p system and then trade files with it.
How dare they!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
At least in our great state north of the 49th parallel we don't really have to listen to our music with the fear of the FBI coming in and arresting us for listening to music we downloaded to evaluate. Our wonderful government just takes our money from buying blank media instead.
but it would be nice if we could get some kind of representation in the senate or congress so we could voice out conserns.
What ever did happen to representation in government?
Honestly, this law will never be used against the "normal" citizen. However, what should worry you is this, the law can be used to imprison or harm people who the gov't (or a malicious DA) wants out of the way.
Let's say you have a paranoid administration like the Nixon one, or a socio-fascist one like FDR's that wants an easy way to get rid of dissidents. What's a good way? Find out that they used Kazaa a few times, and imprison them for a few years.
This law is another example of government intrusion into your everyday life through regulation and taxes.
"Bring back the Articles of Confederation!"
See Pirates With Attitude for one instance in which I was personally involved.
Oh well, I will just have to use DirectConnect or IRC where the 431.322.12 of the Internet Privacy Act applies, it saying that if you are affiliated with any government, police, investigative, ANTI-Piracy Group, RIAA, MPAA, Universal, Fox, any other movie production company or video game company or console manufacturer or distribution company or group, or any other related group, or were formally a worker of one, you CANNOT enter. If this is violated, any evidence obtained during this violation can be thrown out of court.
On a side note, with the average user base of Kazaa averaging over 1 million constantly not to mention the tens of millions who log in periodically, I am so sure that the US government will jail half the teenage population in the US. This is a bluff plain and simple.
Do you legislators ever vote for you?
I have a hard time believing that Swiss Citizens have voted on every single line in the law books. When Switzerland joined the UN recently, did you actually vote on that, or did some representative vote in your name,.
Not a flame, but I'm curious how it works in other countries (I got some idea when I spent a week there in June, but a week is so little time).
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I'll go to jail for what I believe in. .. said the anonymous coward.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
File swappers are already commiting theft. This changes nothing except that it spells out the the sentences you could get.
Even if this law didn't exist, and the feds raid your house and take your mp3 filled drive away, you are still going to be indicted.
No sig
Did you put "loose" in quotes because you couldn't spell it, or you weren't sure what it meant? Kiddo, you need to spend less time on Kazaa, and more with a good book.
So don't let more than $1000 of stuff get up and it looks like you might slip under it.
I might be reading that wrong, but that is how I am looking and interpeting it. IANAL of course. Of couse I am probably interpeting it wrong or taking it out of context.
Instead of hammering redhat, Freebsd, ftp.kernel.org every time the latest and greatest is released, wouldn't it be a better use of resources to make a kazaa-like program that distributes the bandwidth of multiple mirror sites? I seem to remember something similar to this being discussed before but has anything like that been done? I actually feel kinda bad that my most "local" redhat mirror is ftp.redhat.com so I purposely rotate ftp sites to even things out.
" It doesn't matter if you've forsworn Napster, uninstalled Kazaa and now are eagerly padding the record industry's bottom line by snapping up $15.99 CDs by the cartload. Be warned--you're what prosecutors like to think of as an unindicted federal felon."
So in essence, theres no reason for me to stop, now that I've already started.
"CNET posted an article claiming you could be liable for $250,000 in fines and up to 3 years in prison for p2p file sharing"
Good thing I'm a leecher!
Dnaumov - Meta-modding tends to be unkind people who speak out against the "everything should be free" dogma surrounding Slashdot. I disagree with you, but I've seen enough of your posts before to know (hope) you're not trolling.
Yes, I steal music. If you've read the latest article on the RIAA's trouble regarding price-fixing you'd realize they also steal from me.
That's all I have to say.
~D:
RTFL = Read The F'ing Law `(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000 You have nothing to worry about, continue file sharing!
"How fortunate for leaders, that the masses do not think." -- Adolf Hitler
I mean, couldn't you, if you got caught, just go out and buy the CDs that they accuse you of illegaly downloading?
Or what if your friend, who owns the latest Eminem CD, comes over your house, downloads it and plays it for you, and then deletes it? Or rather, how can they ever prove that that didn't happen?
I would guess that they only will prosecute people who upload stuff. Actually, I would guess that it's just a scare tactic; or maybe they'll pull a Mitnick and throw some random college kid in jail for 5 years, just to make an example of him. Yikes though.
c-hack.com |
Yes, the Swiss had a public referendum on joining the UN. It won in a squeaker: 12 cantons (like US states) for, 11 cantons against.
In Switzerland, important changes to the law must be approved by the public.
I just brought up the text of the bill. I'll give my obligatory IANAL here, but in order to be prosecuted under the bill, it looks like you must:
Traffic copies ammounting to over $1000 in retail value within a 180 day period.
Engage in electronic reproduction for financial gain
So, if you aren't selling the right to download your MP3s, or burning and selling (at a profit) CD s of material you download, or even if you do these things on a very small scale, it looks like you can't be prosecuted. This law does not affect the average P2P user, it just affects people who bootleg as a business and happen to use P2P networks to accomplish their goals.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
You aren't going to get thrown in the slammer for P2P File Sharing. Your going to get thrown in the slammer for illegal P2P File Sharing of copyrighted material. Granted that 99.99% of P2P File Sharing done now is illegal, it is wrong to label all P2P File Sharing as illegal.
Just because you don't know of any legal P2P File Sharing doesn't exist. Here is Open Office v1.2, Matrix Reloaded Superbowl Trailer, and this website has a lot of legitimate P2P content including Linux Distro's. Do note that all of the content above is on the Gnutella2 Network using Shareaza.
that Hollywood needs Digital Rights Management legislation because copyright laws lack teeth, and there are no effective means to deal with copyright violations online.
Catching copyright violators will be a good thing for copyright reform: suddenly the same people who currently just ignore the laws will press to see them changed. Still better, the legitimate calls for copyright reform won't be drowned out or confused by the wails of spoiled teenagers who just want to grab free music.
Copyright needs reforming, nationally and internationally. Grabbing all the music you can in violation of copyright doesn't help the cause of those who actually want to do something about the problem. Enforcing the existing laws, and getting rid of the violators can only help the cause of copyright in the long run.
--
Ytrew
It specifically says if you upload a copyrighted file in order to be allowed to download other copyrighted files, the downloads count as financial gain even though you don't get any cash. Welcome to the doublespeak future.
The idea of facing even $5,000 in fines for obtaining a few hundred songs illegally should be considered ludicrous. This fine should be at the top of such a penalty, and only in extreme circumstances. A $250,000 fine for such a thing sounds, to me, simply un-American. We like our lax criminal penalties. Who does the RIAA think they are?!
In Switzerland, they actually let people VOTE on whether they want these acts or not.
Nice to hear it. Wish we had that here.
Got to love America?s "Democratic" government, passing laws without even letting the people know.
Actually, the US isn't a democracy. It's a republic. The general population doesn't vote on the laws (as in a democracy). The enfranchised portion of the general population votes on the legislators, then the legislators vote on the laws.
Originally the general population voted on the representatives and the states chose the senators (with the states' population in turn chosing the state reps and governor who were the ones chosing the senators). But that got changed so the population votes directly on both.
Of course sometimes they pass laws without the CONGRESSMEN knowing.
- The congresscritters rarely read the text, but depend on the recommendations of their staff, their party, (or sometimes their major contributors B-( ).
- Even if they want to read what they're voting, often it's impossible. The staffers put together the final text of enormous bills, which appear on the legislators desks within hours, or even minutes, of the final vote. (I recall one that was a stack of paper several feet thick that showed up in just such a fashion.) I've yet to hear of a congresscritter voting against a bill because "I haven't had time to read it."
- A conference committee might completely re-write a bill (possibly with similar staff "assistance"). Both houses normally rubber-stamp a conference committee's results.
And even when the congresscritters know what they're voting on, maybe nobody else does, or has a chance to comment. For instance:
The "Firearm Owners Protection Act" was a bill to protect gunowners from the web of 30,000-ish conflicting state, county, and local firearms laws when traveling. A tiny bill that said ~"If it's legal where you start your trip, legal where you finish it, and locked up in between, it's ok to transport it no matter what the state and local laws say in the places you pass through"~. Much support from pro-firearms groups.
In the minutes before the final vote it was amended to also ban the manufacture of new machine guns for sale to private citizens in the (already heavily regulated) private market. So the supply would be limited to those already papered - and thus become obsolete, expensive, and eventually disappear.
SURPRISE!
Of course it passed. (And some pro-gun organizations got a lot of undeserved flack for "selling out" the machine-gun fans, when it was really a crooked political gambit by the anti-gun politicians.)
Of course the Swiss don't have this problem. Their government REQUIRES them each to have a machine gun (or some other piece of large-scale military nastiness) handy. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Why is this causing such an "outrage"? Stealing copyrighted material IS wrong. If you don't like it, then well, tough shit. Copyrights are there for a reason (let's forego the whole argument about Disney and never-expiring copyrights -- that's a different topic). If I own a work of art that I've put a lot of effort into, I certainly do not want it copied around without any control on my part, unless I've specifically granted everyone permission to do so by releasing it under the "free unlimited distribution allowed" license (e.g. this creative commons clause). If you violate my copyright, then I want you punished. If you think this is unfair of me, then fart in my general direction and don't use my work. I will certainly understand and not be offended in the slightest.
You cannot expect every artist to put their works into the public domain or license them for free distribution. That's just not how this world works, whatever your youthful idealism is telling you. Please respect people's copyrights and don't steal their works. If you do, then don't make a scene when they press charges.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Regardless of how much you disagree with a license, doesn't make it any more right to turn around and do the same thing that you hate so much when you're on the other side.
At the risk of being labeled a troll right off the bat, quite a number of people here seem like a bunch of whiny people who feel that they can just take what they want from other people, but their heads virtually explode when the shoe is on the other foot.
We have a Democratic Republic. This means that we elect people to hold office that we feel will act in the best interest of the American people. Also keep in mind that Switzerland is .0043 times the size of the US and its population is .0262 that of the US. It's a lot easier to have a smaller population have a more active role in government like this.
CNET posted an article claiming you could be liable for $250,000 in fines and up to 3 years in prison for p2p file sharing.
No it did not.
It posted an article saying that you could be [etc.] for p2p file sharing of COPYRIGHTED WORKS, WITHOUT PERMISSION.
It's just FINE to run or use a p2p network and share UNCOPYRIGHTED works or copyrighted works WITH permission.
Let's get it RIGHT people. If we let "p2p file sharing" become synonomous with "p2p file sharing of stolen intelectual property" we've lost half the battle.
It used to be - as with "hackers" vs. "crackers" - the mainstream media getting it wrong and tarring the good guys with the bad-guy brush, and the nerd sites getting it right but crying in the wilderness. Now we've got a mainstream site getting it right, while the slashdot posting gets it wrong.
I can just imagine the RIAA lawyers pouncing on this article as further evidence that "the only use for p2p is theft". "See! Even they admit it!"
So let's have a little more attention to such distinctions - from the posters, or for GOD'S SAKE at LEAST from the EDITORS!
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Of course the Swiss don't have this problem. Their government REQUIRES them each to have a machine gun (or some other piece of large-scale military nastiness) handy. B-)
...
Well, a little red knife, anyway.
Or the big red knife:
- Tiny little scisors
- Tiny little screwdriver
- Tiny little tommygun
- Tiny little satelite uplink
- Tiny little antitank missile
- Tiny little tactical nuke
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
yeah of course :p :p
if we join the army we get a automatic rifle and even some bullets to keep at home (it's part of our militia system)
but it is not legal to buy or own other such weapons
they wanted do requier tank crews to keep their tanks at home but nobody had space for it, so they just sold the old once to people for near to nothing,
it's a shame that you have to keep it inside of a building or i would have bought one
what we have is called a half direct democracy
that means we have some sort of congress too and to my happiness no president(if i look at bush). but we have also the possibility to infulence our law or constitution directly by a public vote
what you have is called a indirect democracy in our schools
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
OOP! Boomtown Rats-Fine Art Of Surfacing CD - Item #2501717xxx Final price: $72.00 Your maximum bid: $19.00 End date: Jan-23-03 16:29 PST
First, in re: the NET Act, what is the "retail value" of an out-of-print title? My assumption is that it is zero, otherwise the record co., in this case CBS/Sony, would market it. By my reading, this Act applies only if the copyrighted material has retail value.
If the retail value is zero, then I don't see how this NET Act can possibly apply if I would choose to download the MP3s of the entire album and burn my own CD. Perhaps a lawyer could shed some light on this matter.
Secondly, why won't this record co. and others wake up and see that there's obviously a market for this CD, and presumably thousands of other out-of-print titles? Why are they pissing away this revenue stream? (No pun intended) Maybe they're too busy scrambling after the next Britney?
In the case of OOP titles, do I have to become a criminal to obtain my music or else pay $72 for a used disc on Ebay? Totally bizarre.
it always strikes me funny that everyone got in an uproar over p2p when we've been doing the same thing with usenet for ages. ok, usenet may be harder for the newbies to figure out. its not always point click simple, but when p2p is dead (not saying thats an inevitability) then folks will say "hey, geek, is there some other way for me to download britney spears?" so when are they gonna try to shutdown usenet? or irc? two things I enjoy far more than the p2p proggies.
-
The wrongness is not that relevant--the punishment is completely disproportionate to the offense. Letting your parking meter expire is also wrong, but when we catch someone doing it, we write them a ticket. We don't send them to prison for years.
In the P2P situation, there's no demonstration that the copyright holder actually lost the "value" of the copied works. So it's ridiculous to treat it as if that amount was actually lost, rather than (realistically) a few percent of the amount, tops. So if uploading $1000 of CD's is "theft", it's theft comparable to shoplifting a pair of blue jeans, and should be prosecuted about the same way. Also, the stuff defining downloading more stuff as "financial gain" is positively Orwellian. What we're seeing is War On Drugs Part II.
ObLink: The Right To Read.
Only thing that bothers me about this whole thing is that they supposedly say that file swapping is analgous to stealing, yet it carries a higher punishment. If I shoplift, I am not fined for 250k. What is wrong with this picture? If stealin is stealin, then punish people accordingly. I am not charged 250k if I go into a store and copy a magazine.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
Not used it myself yet, but it sounds neat.
Be careful! New moon tonight.
Strategically, it's flawed. Sure stealing is stealing is stealing, but the value is so high en mass and the method of stealing is so easy (you don't even have to intrude or even interact with the person being stolen from) that people will find ways to circumvent it.
Since (I imagine) there are literally thousands of amoral people with enough programming talent, knowledge of network protocols, and spare time, I can't see a few "test cases" putting an end to sharing.
Essentially, the investigators will have to monitor the networks to see where files come from, then seize the computers to show that the file lists are the same as they monitored.
If one builds an IP spoofing scheme (similar to Triangle Boy, for example) into a P2P protocol, the actual IP of the sharer could be hidden. Then reasonable doubt goes out the window.
Prosecutions would then have to focus on the downloaders, which is a much more difficult problem because it takes quite a bit to get to the value trip points.
(Not that I'm trying to give anyone ideas or anything or trying to suggest that there may be a degree thesis in this scheme.)
I've been waiting for this to happen for some time. We are now on the cusp of our latest suicidal "war" on our own society. I have no problem with protecting copyrights, but this law puts the Draco in draconian. Do we really want to head in this direction again? Do we really want to start locking people up for years for an arguably victimless crime? How about solving all the murders first? How about the punishment fitting the crime: perhaps a fine and restitution?
Your accusation of thoughtcrime is based solely on doublethink...
So in essence, theres no reason for me to stop, now that I've already started.
No, there is. IIRC, there's a three year statute of limiations on copyright violations, criminal or civl. (IANAL, duh)
Stop _right now_, and the chances of you getting smacked for P2P start decreasing by 0.09% every day.
`(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, or
`(2) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000,
Exactly what is a Phonorecord? Does this mean that in order to procescute, the RIAA will have to bring back vinyl records, then prove that converted your vinyl "phonorecords" to MP3, prove you shared it for 180 days, and then find the retail value of your online P2P collection to make sure it's in excess of $1000? Does the retail price take into account inflation or is the "original" retail price of the "phonorecord"? I just called Wal*Mart and tried to get the price of my "Buck Owens, Under Your Spell Again" phonorecord, but didn't have any luck.
If they can apply this law to P2P sharing, I will be amazed. I still can't believe that the US Congress, (the government of the most technologically advanced society in the world), used the word "Phonorecords" in 1997. How embarassing. France and Germany are probably still snickering.
As far as I am concerned, anything that came out only on "Phonorecord" should be in the public domain already. Looks like the geeks are going to have to organize a political party if we want this nonsense to stop. I vote for TUX as the party mascott.
If you have never seen this:
m
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/
Is there a site for boycotting the MPAA? The old one seems to be gone.
I wish we could also boycott movie ratings. What right do they have telling us what movies we can and can't see? Movie ratings are supposedly voluntary, but the theaters are given an ultimatum (uphold them or don't get the movie). Doesn't sound voluntary to me.
***
Look at this written by the guy in charge of MPAA:
http://www.mpaa.org/movieratings/about/index.ht
By summer of 1966, the national scene was marked by insurrection on the campus, riots in the streets, rise in women's liberation, protest of the young, doubts about the institution of marriage, abandonment of old guiding slogans, and the crumbling of social traditions. It would have been foolish to believe that movies, that most creative of art forms, could have remained unaffected by the change and torment in our society.
A New Kind of American Movie
The result of all this was the emergence of a "new kind" of American movie - frank and open, and made by filmmakers subject to very few self-imposed restraints.
Almost within weeks in my new duties, I was confronted with controversy, neither amiable nor fixable. The first issue was the film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," in which, for the first time on the screen, the word "screw" and the phrase "hump the hostess" were heard. In company with the MPAA's general counsel, Louis Nizer, I met with Jack Warner, the legendary chieftain of Warner Bros., and his top aide, Ben Kalmenson. We talked for three hours, and the result was deletion of "screw" and retention of "hump the hostess," but I was uneasy over the meeting.
***
screw! hump the hostess! Oh no, we are all going to die if we hear that, huh? What kind of super-conservative nutcase is he?
And nudity? A PG-13 can have quite a lot of violence (even kids shows have violence), yet it can't have full-frontal nudity? What kind of puritans come up with this stuff?
Volunteer Mozilla developer, RPI Student.
Democracy isn't orthoganal to a republic. Thats a myth.
: a government having a chief of state who is not a
monarch and who in modern times is usually a president : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government
:a government in which supreme power resides in a body
of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives
responsible to them and governing according to law : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government
c : a usually specified republican
government of a political unit <the French Fourth Republic> : a body of persons freely engaged in a specified activity
<the republic of letters> : a constituent political and territorial unit of the former
nations of Czechoslovakia, the U.S.S.R., or Yugoslavia
: government by the people; especially :
rule of the majority :a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people
and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation
usually involving periodically held free elections : a political unit that has a democratic
government : the principles and policies of the Democratic
party in the U.S. : the common people especially when constituting the source
of political authority : the absence of hereditary or arbitrary class distinctions
or privileges
republic
Pronunciation: ri-'p&-blik
Function: noun
Etymology: French rpublique, from Middle French republique, from Latin respublica, from res thing, wealth + publica, feminine of publicus public -- more at REAL, PUBLIC
Date: 1604
1 a (1)
(2)
b (1)
(2)
2
3
democracy
Pronunciation: di-'m-kr&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
Etymology: Middle French democratie, from Late Latin democratia, from Greek dEmokratia, from dEmos + -kratia -cracy
Date: 1576
1 a
b
2
3 capitalized
4
5
So we in the USA live in a Democratic Republic .
living on SS and it's petty larceny. Maximum sentence of about a year. If she wants her money back she can sue you when you get out.
"Steal" a $.50 song from Metallica, go to jail for three years and pay a $250,000 dollar fine.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
KFG
In 2001, a 21-year-old Michigan man named Brian Baltutat was successfully prosecuted under the NET Act for posting a mere 142 software programs on the "Hacker Hurricane" Web site.
'Mere'?
I didn't even know that there were 142 software programs out there worth stealing...
~Idarubicin
It appears this is just a rehash of the same old copyright enforcement act. You remember, that annoying FBI/Interpol warning before every movie on tape, LD and DVD. The warning that somehow never makes it into your 'archival' copy. States something about several thousand dollars in fines and possible jail time for non-archival copying of the movie.
Want to hit these jokes where it hurts? Write a decentralized Kazaa that uses pseudo-random rotating ports and a healthy encryption mix. Make sure you use all the standard ports as well as ports for gaming systems (PS2 & Xbox). Encryption doesn't have to be too heavy - 128bit for searches and 40bit for transfers. When the court commands the ISPs to monitor traffic the ISPs have to tell the court to stick it since the DMCA (?!) won't allow cracking/breaking encrypted communications.
The No Electronic Theft law and the supposed "Internet Privacy Act" are two separate laws. Moreover, one was referenced in an article submission quoted from a reputable (subjective, I know) news source, and the other was an off-hand comment by one of the half-million or so Slashdot subscribers.
Trolling about trolling. Yeesh.
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
Yes, the Swiss had a public referendum on joining the UN. It won in a squeaker: 12 cantons (like US states) for, 11 cantons against.
Yeah, but that last canton had a huge number of disputed votes mistakenly cast for Pat Buchanan!
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
A fine should relate to the damage done, right? How to prove you did so much damage? The RIAA would like people to believe that every single CD shared is the full price of that CD stolen from the artist. Come on! We all know that the truth is far from that, and hard to calculate, or even prove that damage was actually done.
Prison? Aren't they already crowded in the US? So, next to thieves and murderers, fill them up with P2P file sharing folks? Yeah, sure.
Prosecution by the Justice Department? I thought they were there to serve the public, to keep serial killers of the street and so on. Spend tax payers money for prosecuting folks that share their favourite musician's work with other fans? Get real.
And get it to stand up, when going through the higher courts? I don't think so.
Who to begin with? More users of any P2P network than there are lawyers on total in the world...
It's really amazing that such nonsense laws actually get passed in 'the land of the free'.
And really useful too. Crackdown on KaZaA, and the next popular P2P network will be one that's harder to force out of existence.
Actually the NET act has a clause stating that it does nothing to effect prior fair use laws. Anything you could do before you can do now.
Then again, to hear some people tell it, watching a TV show without watching commercials is theft too, so I think fair use was obsoleted long before this thing happened.
Nice try, Mr. Eisner. Unfortunately, this is exactly the topic. The fact is that businesses which benefit from copyrights that don't expire are co-opting the legal processes in the USA, which is what the original post is about. This law is just an expression of a more general malaise.
That's nice that you own a copyrighted work. I have the right to incorporate your work when making a parody, whether or not you are offended by it-- I think Mattel proved that today. But that's not the point. The point is that I used to have a second option- I could wait for you to die. Once you were dead, there was a proscribed period during which I could not use your original work- but if I was lucky enough to live 100 years after you, well after world+dog had forgotten your name and what you used to be famous for, I could take your idea and breathe life into it and bring it new relevance in my new time so that people could enjoy it again. And if I had a proper sense of humility, I could even give you credit for inspiring me.
As it stands now, I can do all of that- but I have to pay Disney, or BMG, or SONY for the priveledge of trying to make a house on the foundation that you built, so some random fuck that neither you nor I have ever met (you've been dead for 50 years, remember?) can keep making the payments on his goddamn X5 beemer.
nooo-ooo, but I can expect that the Constitution of the United States should mean more than the wishes of Disney, Inc. to the lawmakers in this country. After all, that's the oath they swore to when they took office. Right now, my expectations are not being met. Since I don't have the financial power to impact(read: buy the vote of) 95% of the lawmakers, especially the ones who benefit the most from 'donations' made by the content industry, I'd rather exercise my power of civil disobedience against the companies who pay for their re-election campaigns. Make 'em feel it in the pocket, dontchaknow. And I don't think that Rosa Parks intended to make a scene, I think she was just fed up by the bullshit she had to go through every day. People aren't stupid- if they learn of a better way to get to what they want, they'll take it. Right now, the record industry doesn't need more laws protecting copyright- they need someone to build a better mousetrap.
I'd be thrilled if someone would press charges- I'd go to jail (or guantanamo) first. File sharing cases would overwhelm the courts, and the laws would be changed. I don't see change happening that way, but I guess anything is possible.
Let's make a test case. Why don't you put your money where your mouth is? I'm not the Devil, testing your faith... Michael Eisner is the only man who can currently claim that distinction and I no longer think you're him. Send me some of this 'content' you claim to have, via Kazaa. Call it "Mr_Icon.MP3" or whatever you want. I'll download it, and then re-publish it, and you can sue me for copyright violation and charge me for criminal violation of the NET act. I'll be waiting for your reply...
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
A surefire way [no guarantees etc.] to avaid prosecution: Change your Kazaa Username to "Bobby-Sue," "Stargurl," or "Spiceworld47893."
Basically anything that suggests you're a blonde, pretty teenage girl. There's no fucking way the RIAA et al. are going to sue someone like that; the publicity would decimate them.
Oh... you might have to stop sharing all those German Leather Dungeon mpegs, though, just to keep up the facade.
Although, who the fuck knows what teenage girls are into these days...
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
All this P2P stuff was (originally?) supposed to fossilize the likes of the RIAA and transform the music industry into one where middlemen were eliminated, artists were (finally) fairly paid, and consumers reaped the benefits of abundant free content. But none of this happened.
A comparable analogy would have been if the Open Source community, instead of creating their own, superior free software, had all turned into lazy warez junkies. You can't win a war relying on your enemy's resources
So what we need is an "Open Music" revolution. But that will require educating artists who don't spend their days reading Slashdot. They need to learn that a record label deal is not the holy grail of their career, but rather in most cases, a hindrance. Artists need to treat their talent as a personal enterprise, not a raffle ticket to ride the gravy train.
When this dream is realized, the lawsuits will end, the fascist laws will be repealed, the manufactured pop-icons will vanish, and the world will be a better place. Get to it.