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Meet the DoJ's 'Anti-Piracy' Lawyers
Answering your questions will be the attorneys assigned to prosecute intellectual property crimes in the Department of Justice's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS). Spearheading this group will be Michael O'Leary, Deputy Chief for Intellectual Property who oversees the day-to-day intellectual property enforcement operations. Here is some background on CCIPS and their intellectual property efforts:CCIPS began as a small group within DOJ in 1991, with a focus on network crimes (e.g. hacking into machines, destructive worms and viruses, denial of service attacks), intellectual property crimes (e.g. software piracy and counterfeiting), and electronic evidence issues. CCIPS is part of the Criminal Division of DOJ (which, as its name suggests, is primarily responsible for enforcement of federal criminal laws). Today, the section has grown to almost 40 lawyers, of whom about a dozen focus on IP issues. (Please keep in mind that it will be the IP prosecutors answering questions here, so save your non-IP-related hacking or electronic evidence issues for another time.)
What do the attorneys assigned to IP at CCIPS do? The IP prosecutors in the Section are responsible for establishing and enforcing the Department's overall intellectual property rights enforcement program, including the prosecution of federal intellectual property crimes. In some instances, CCIPS handles the prosecution of intellectual property cases. More frequently they work closely with prosecutors in the U.S. Attorneys' Offices around the country who handle the vast majority of federal criminal prosecutions, both IP and non-IP. They also provide training on IP issues for prosecutors and law enforcement, both domestically and internationally. Other responsibilities include reviewing new policy proposals, legislation, or international agreements related to IP, and providing advice to other government agencies or components of DOJ. The prosecutors also work closely with foreign law enforcement counterparts to coordinate IP enforcement activities around the globe.
While they are committed to fully answering your questions, as Department of Justice attorneys, they are subject to various Federal laws, Department of Justice rules, and ethics rules. They are not permitted to provide legal advice to individual private citizens. This means that there is no attorney-client relationship between CCIPS and Slashdot readers, users, or moderators (and answering questions on Slashdot should not be interpreted as creating one). Therefore, they will not answer questions seeking legal advice. Finally, they cannot discuss ongoing cases, investigations or related hypotheticals.
To learn more about the Department of Justice or the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, visit the following web sites, www.usdoj.gov and www.cybercrime.gov.
Let's say there's investigating company X for something. A related hypothetical might be, "Let's say you found company X guilty of Y, but there was some other factor Z involved; doesn't Z invalidate your accusation of Y?"
What do they mean by "related hypotheticals"?
By this, they mean that you cannot take an ongoing case, change the names to Widget INC vs. Evil Empire, LLC. and ask them about, and expect an answer.
As far as I can tell, the term "fair use" is widely misused. "Fair use" applies to your right to quote half a page out of Harry Potter for your criticism of it, or your right to create the DomiMatrix parody of Matrix.
Wether or not you have the right to make any copies for personal use has very little to do with the Fair Use provisions in copyright law.
That's easy. You need to pay a personal visit to your congressman, carrying a large bag of "campaign donations".
That's disputable. Courts have found in the past that it was not licensed. And licensure flies in the face of copyright law and perhaps ought to be barred on such grounds as abusive.
Besides -- fair use exists even in the absence of all other relationships, and can protect against even otherwise gross infringements. IF you qualify for fair use under the particular circumstances involved.
So it's still available even with licensure.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Very very good question. I wanted to provide other examples about child molesters getting deferred adjudication (translated as "you can go home, but if you do it again you'll be in more trouble"), but I can't find links.
When I lived in Fort Worth one of the radio DJ's had a top-10 sex offender list (based on local convictions that week) every Friday; I was shocked that the convicted child molesters very frequently got deferred adjudication, which is basically probation except you don't have to report to anybody. (Supposedly you get extra jailtime if you're caught doing it again.)
Unfortunately I can't find a link to similar info. I believe the DJ was the one who more or less created the Amber Alert system, but I can't remember his name.
CowboyMeal: How seriously do you take a question from someone named "stinky wizzleteats"?
From the slashdot FAQ:
I take myself a lot more seriously as a slashdotter today than I did when I chose that name. I'm not sure whether that's a bad thing or a good thing.
Our favorite law, the DMCA, changed all that. The DMCA changed it from a civil action to a criminal action, making copyright law violations federal crimes.
Just another reason (that hasn't been talked too much about) to hate this vile piece of legislation.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Some introductory material first:
Projects like Freenet, GNUnet and IIP are creating decentralized, anonymous Peer-to-Peer networks that can strongly resist censorship by any attacker. I believe that if (when?) these kinds of secure networks replace currently popular networks (FastTrack, IRC, etc) as IP infringement tools, your job of effectively finding, stoping and prosecuting IP infringers will become much, much harder, and will require many more computer resources (perhaps impossibly many resources, both in computing time and in network bandwith).
Now my questions:
For how long do you think mass IP infringement will continue to take place in plain view, rather than on decentralized, anonymous, P2P networks?
If mass IP infringment does move to those kinds of networks, what kind of resources will your office be able to expend to attack those networks?
Would you be allowed to attack those networks at all without violating their user's First Ammendment right to anonymous speech?
What changes to IP law do you think would be needed to address decentralized anonymous networks?
Here's a link to that debate. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/june03/copyright 9a.html
Whether an album or a cd is better quality depends on a couple things. The main is the source of the music and the destination. Analog music such as classical, orchestra, or electric guitar has better quality on vinyl because you're transporting the sound from analog to analog, no loss (assuming you take care of the vinyl). Music made with digital instruments or samples sounds better on cd because of less noise. Digital to digital, no loss. The debate springs up when you put classical on a cd or a synthisized piece on vinyl. Converting formats is where the change is. Not to mention compression...
"hey, I bought the VHS version of a movie, so I'm entitled to the DVD version now!"
You CAN make a LEGAL DVD copy of your VHS for your own use. I plan on doing this to all my VHS tapes when the price goes down a bit on DVD recorders.
This is entirely different from making a copy of your friend's DVD of "Where Brother Art Thou" because you own the VHS version. They are NOT the same content, even the movie itself is often higher quality.
I showed an "audiophile" associate of mine that he could make high bitrate MP3's of his records that still sounded like a record when played back (that "vinyl" sound is actually distortion, not some beautiful lossless analog magic most record freaks claim). He then spent WEEKS converting his records to MP3. That perfectly legal. If he sells them now though, he must destroy his "backups" (the mp3's).
By the way, you only have to buy a high quality needle etc once when you want to rip your vinyl, then you'll always hear that high quality from that point on.
Oh, and you didn't buy a license. You bought a copy. See "Doctrine of First Sale" in google, or read that other good reply to your own post.
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
Without copyright law, there COULDN'T be a GPL. Or a BSD license, or any software license that allows the author to receive compensation or even credit for their work.