Senator Seeks Restrictions to Music Laws, Fines

Justen writes "Following this article from last month, Senator Norm Coleman (R.-Minn.) has announced that he will seek to limit federal penalties for copyright downloads and seek to restrict the subpoena power essentially granted to the industry through the DMCA. The RIAA responded by calling the current situation an 'epidemic.'" Sadly, there's no quantitative values for proposed reduced measures yet, but given the speed at which government moves it's reassuring to know the issue is this far along already.

Comments

But...

[Raul654]

...since when has Orrin Hatch been anything but extremist in *any* of his views?

GOP surprises me on this issue

[astrashe]

Putting aside what this guy is doing, I've always been a little surprised that the GOP doesn't side with downloaders on the P2P issue. I think that the fact that they don't shows that they have a very real committment to property rights, and that they don't want to compromise that for political expediency. In that sense, I think it's fairly admirable.

Because on the other hand, Hollywood is one of the main sources of support for the Democrats. The Democrats raise tons of money out there, and movie stars and other prominent Hollywood types are almost all Democratic.

P2P represents an almost ideal way for the Republicans to extract revenge on Hollywood, to "cut off their air supply." But there's almost no support at all for doing that within the party.

I know it will rub a lot of people the wrong way to say that it's possible to interpret protecting the property rights of international corporations as a principled position, but I think that's what's going on.

I sort of wish they wouldn't, though...

Re:GOP surprises me on this issue

[spiritraveller]

Hollywood is one of the main sources of support for the Democrats. The Democrats raise tons of money out there, and movie stars and other prominent Hollywood types are almost all Democratic.

Movie stars do not equal the MPAA or the RIAA. Those two organizations represent the studios and the record companies. Those businesses are not owned by "the movie stars" but by people who want to make money by selling other people's art.

If I had to generalize as you are doing, I would say that people who make money off of the creativity of others tend to be Republican.

Only makes sense

[release7]

It seems to me, copyright laws were written with publisher in mind. The high penalties prevent a company like Random House from lifting a work from McGraw Hill and selling and distributing the books. Fining a 15 year-old $100,000 for sharing the latest Limp Bizkit single is just a little out of whack. The "crime" doesn't fit the punishment.

Re:Only makes sense

[dirk]

But with the internet, everyone can be a publisher. While the penalties prevent one publisher from lifting work from another and republishing it, any kid on the internet with Kazaa can reach probably more people that either publishing company can individually. To say that Sony should be fined $100,000 because they stole EMI's music (or whatever example you want), but Billy who actually distibuted as much of the stolen music as Sony shouldn't be charged that much isn't right. I think the fines are too much, but the reason isn't that people should be fined less than publishing companies.

Re:Only makes sense

[bmwm3nut]

I think you are mostly correct. Say sony did steal a song from EMI and distribute it, they should be fined $100K or $150K or whatever the current law it. But if sony "stole" 100 songs from EMI and only distributed one of them, they should still only be fined the $100K or so.

If billy steals 1000 songs from P2P but distributes none, he should not be fined. But if billy steals 1000 songs from P2P and distributes them, he should be fined for the number of songs he distributes.

I think the laws were written to prevent the distribution of material. The person on the receiving end should not be fined, it should be the distributer. Even in the P2P world, the distributer and receiver are easily defined.

gone overboard

[potpie]

The RIAA is going overboard with their subpoenas... $150000 per song??? They're blaming something for their economic woes (and i've seen the statistics- they don't have many) that can make them more money when they exploit it. It's no different than when they claimed home radio taping was killing music in the 80's. Hmmm... they seemed to have survived that, didn't they?

Re:Party...

[errxn]

"Our team"? Since when do you decide what "team" the members of the /. community belong to?

Re:Hmmmm

[TheRaven64]

Politicians survive by persuading the public to re-elect them. The RIAA has made a really good job recently of persuading politicians that most of there electorate are file sharers.

Re:A nice thought but a little naive

[HBI]

While you are right in essence, you fail to trace the reason why. Most Republicans support business not out of idealism but expediency. If business does well, the argument goes, the economy will fare well, people will have jobs, etc. Also, we will remain in our current role as the dominant economy in the world.

Your average Republican will point at the Euro zone and show what we would become if we started making exceptions for file downloaders and such. Anemic economic performance is the perceived detriment.

There are flaws in this argument, but that's not the point right now.

Re:Finally something sensibe from our politicians

[GoofyBoy]

Don't go blindly support this guy.

He doesn't state what the fines should be. They are $750 - 150 000 right now. What if he, through back room dealing and lobbying, it gets down to $500 - 75 000? A dramatic decrease but still you might think that its way too high. (i.e. still can wipe out the savings of a college student)

There are just too little details to go on to get all excited.

Honestly.

[JayBlalock]

It sounds like this is just a rare case of a Senator these days recognizing that "let a corporation do whatever it wants" is NOT a good idea. The RIAA's campaign started off bad, and keeps getting worse. Anyone with a shred of sense can see that - piracy aside - their business model is quickly becoming unsustainable. Yet they don't seem to recognize this, at least not publically, and their insistance that it's 100% because of piracy suggests they are profoundly out of touch with the real world.

It also suggests that at this point, they've become so entrenched in this mindset that they probably WOULD happily start suing more and more people, the more their sales start to slide. Which, I personally think represents one of the most profound perversions of our economic principles imaginable. Did anyone else who bought something from Magnatunes in the last week stop to think, gee, I probably just sent another subpoena to some grandmother in NYC? That's virtually how bad the situation has gotten, and a logical conclusion that can be drawn from their quixotic belief that ALL their sales problems are from piracy. It boils down to, "Buy our stuff or we sue you."

Since the government can't act DIRECTLY to stop them (well, it could, but it won't) the best thing they could do is seek to limit the RIAA's power to weild lawsuits. If you eliminate the chance of them profitting from this (the fines would be less than the lawyers' fees), and make sure no one suddenly wakes up to discover a quarter-million lawsuit in their mailbox, then the RIAA might just be forced to face reality.

(WHY the RIAA is taking this stance is another issue altogether. I personally think it's a snowball, once they started trying to convince their shareholders that their problems were due to piracy, it took on a life of its own)

Protection of citizens rights an 'epedemic'?

[nurb432]

Its Sad.

Its too bad the general public doesnt have a clue about what is going on.

Eventually it will effect them, but by then it will be too late.

Its not just with the music indstustry, its under attack from all sides.. both private industry and goverment..

At least we can tell our grandchildren how we used to be free. Assuming that remains permitted speech of course.

What's his opinion on circumvention?

[Nucleon500]

Apparently Coleman doesn't like outrageous fines or the complete lack of due process the DMCA lets the RIAA get away with. That's good, but he could go further. What are his opinions on the circumvention clauses, the ones which make DeCSS code illegal to use, possess, or even discuss? And are there any other evil parts of the DMCA I'm overlooking? It would be really cool if Coleman's proposal morphed into some kind of DMCA reform, or even totally neutered it.

The problem is not the law itself

[voss]

The problem is that the law is disproportionate to the losses suffered.

The founding fathers who designed the Copyright law always intended to punish those who copied for profit more than those who copied for personal use or distribution for friends...yet that distinction was removed. That should be put back.

There should be a cap on fines for copying that does not involve distribution for profit. IF we cannot have some sort of compulsory licensing ,at least we can have some sanity with the laws we do have.

So, what are you going to do about it?

[werdna]

If that's all you are doing "waiting," then you will do a lot more waiting. Put together good, sound reasons, and lobby actively or support those who are lobbying -- until then, no Senator has any reason to do that.

Realistically, Senators will vote for or against a bill for one of two reasons: (i) they think it will get them elected; or (ii) they think it will get them votes for another bill whose passage will get them elected.

Until you start providing (i) or (ii), your hopes are going to remain just that: hopes.

Re:Party...

[general_re]

Actually, my only point was to illustrate the absurdity of pinning blame for the current scheme on any particular "team", or to rely on another "team" to fix it. There are plenty of unclean hands on both sides of the aisle, and the only way to fix it is for people to put pressure on their own individual representatives.

Potential fines are totally out of whack

[Solandri]

RIAA revenues in 2001: $13.7 billion RIAA new releases in 2001: about 27,000 Figure 10 songs per release avg $13,700,000,000 / 27,000 / 10 = avg $50,700 revenue per song So the way the law is written right now, a song being pirated just once is worth three times more than it is on the free market.