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House Bill to Make File-Sharing an Automatic Felony

Posted by michael on from the thumb-on-the-scales-of-justice dept.

JAgostoni writes "Wired news has an article about a new bill that would make it a felony to upload a file to a P2P network." EFF has a copy of the bill online. Conyers and Berman both get over a quarter of their campaign funding from Hollywood, according to opensecrets.org. You may remember Berman from this bill and this one.

6 of 1,753 comments (clear)

  1. Copyright ownersip by eoyount · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So if I want to share my own copyrighted works free of charge, would that make me a felon, or just anyone who downloads them and makes them available to others?

    --
    To understand recursion,
    you must first understand recursion.
  2. Decoy by Poeir · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Frequently, bills are introduced to Congress to test the waters, or distract attention from bills that are likely to passed to more outrageous bills, that will not be passed. While there is an outcry over the decoy bill, the actual bill, while not as bad, is still preposterous, is slid in quietly; on its own or as a rider. (Of course, in some instances the decoy bill actually does get passed, which is what appears to have happened with the PATRIOT Act; in part due to the name).

    Quite frankly, I think this is a decoy bill. Where's the real one?

    --
    Sigs are like bumper stickers.
  3. Re:Sharing.... by lfourrier · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you have a music (or other copyrighted work) file, and you didn't buy it, technically you stole it...

    Completly wrong. All what you authored is your.
    Mankind is not divided between Hollywood's accredited producers and the rest of the world's consumers.
    I don't want to discuss the use of stole. I want to discuss the concept that creation is reserved to a very few.
    Last year, some study by a French ministery revealled that about 1% of French people did author music using a computer. How are the digital rights of those 600000 peoples managed by all those schemes ?

  4. Re:Sharing.... by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Whatever. 10 years ago, if I copied a bunch of songs onto a tape and gave it to someone else, the RIAA would have given me a fricking medal. It's free advertising on non-durable media. They LOVE their shoddy ass media.

    I've got 2 milk crates of tapes that I bought for around 10 dollars a piece, and only about 1 in 10 still plays worth a damn. I've got around 500 cd's that I've bought for between 12 and 18 dollars a piece. Couple of years ago I had almost 900, but some crackhead busted a window out of my car and swiped 2 cases from my backseat.

    I don't see them falling over themselves to defend my property rights. As far as they're concerned, that money I spent got me nothing but a cheap piece of plastic, and when that's broken or gone, that's my problem. Well, I disagee.

    Far as I'm concerned, I can fileshare for 10 more years at the rate I'm going and the RIAA is STILL going to owe me money. They want to kick down my door, charge me 150000 a song and slap a felony on my ass so I can't vote against their little butt boys, they can give it their best shot.

    --
    ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  5. Re:Time for publicly funded politicians? by BandwidthHog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One of the things that's always disturbed me the most about our legislation-for-the-highest-bidder system is how utterly cheap it is. I mean, think about it: A law that can increase your global corp's profits by $500 million annually can be purchased for a one-time fee of less than a tenth of that. The ROI on bribery is insane! Wouldn't you expect legislation to be priced more concurrently with other costs of doing business, such that said hypothetical law would cost you enough that it took two or three years to really pay off? Seriously, our politicians are just too damn cheap.

    --

    Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
  6. Which other felonies match up with this offense? by ianscot · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Okay, so we've got this proposal -- only that -- to make uploading to p2p networks a felony. What other deeply serious offenses on the list of felonies can possibly compare to the societal damage caused by file sharing? In Alaska, felonies are described as "serious offenses, for which the sentence can include imprisonment for a year or more." The six classes, in Alaska, include:

    Murder in the first degree.

    "Unclassified" felonies, including second-degree murder, attempted murder, selling heroin to a minor, and kidnapping.

    Felony sexual offenses -- including rape and statutory rape.

    Class A felonies: manslaughter, armed robbery, arson with risk of physical injury, selling heroin to adults, and firt-degree assault.

    Class B felonies: unarmed robbery, theft over $25,000, selling cocaine or pot to a minor, burglary in a dwelling, bribery, perjury, second-degree assault, etc.

    Class C: negligent homicide, burglary not in a dwelling, vehicle theft, repeat drunk driving, and bootlegging.

    If only we didn't know that "bootlegging" in that last class has to do with alcohol, there'd at least be one example of a felony that sounded remotely like "letting someone copy a song for free." But... nope.

    One of the qualities of a working justice system is that punishments are proportionate. This bill violates that in spades. Why not let them chop off our mouse hands, you know?

    --
    "Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.