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

The pieces are moving.....

[TheWart]

As Gandalf said, "The pieces are moving...", and there is nothing that can stop them.

It will be interesting to see where all of thsi goes...the RIAA making music sharers into Robin Hoods', one senator (Hatch) saying that mp3 sharing is eqaul to shoplifting, and this guy saying he wants to limit the DMCA.

Interesting times ahead....

Huh

[ProfKyne]

Senator Norm Coleman (R.-Minn.) has announced that he will seek to limit federal penalties for copyright downloads

I didn't realize there were federal penalties for downloading copyrights.

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...

Not always slow.

[LinuxInDallas]

The gov't isn't ALWAYS slow. Look at how quickly they passed legislation for the do-not-call list. If 50 million people sent letters/emails to their congressmen and told them to overturn the DMCA it would be history!

Re:Not always slow.

[theunforgiv3n]

Better yet we should have 50 million people send custom mix cds to thier congressmen houses. Just imagine. 50 million cds with Britney spears and Nelly Hits of the hour. We could not only get the DMCA revoked but the bad aritists revoked too

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

[gidds]

But with the internet, everyone can be a publisher.

Exactly! I know it's been said before, but this is the heart of the problem. Everyone can be a publisher. It's the reason why the internet is such a disruptive technology, such a force for change.

It's also a situation, as you say, that existing precepts, principles, and prejudices simply weren't designed for.

And it's a situation which challenges the power and the very existence of the large publishing organisations (whether in print, film, music, or whatever). No wonder they're doing all they can to prevent it:

• using the might of existing laws in totally inappropriate ways,
• promoting DRM schemes which will prevent individuals and smaller companies from being able to publish works themselves, and
• subtly spreading the idea that only large corporations can be legitimate publishers, effectively dividing the world into 'corporates' and 'consumers', and keeping the latter in their place.

Of course, some of these actions have additional effects, e.g. DRM controlling access to the works which do get published. But I suspect that in the long term, it's this preventing-Joe-Public-from-being-a-publisher aspect which will prove to be the important one.

Technology is breaking down the exclusivity of so many means of creation and publishing - the desktop publishing revolution brought some of the power of the great publishing houses to the individual, and similar advances have brought some of the power of the recording studios, radio networks, photographic workshops, post offices, movie studios, sheet music publishers, news networks, &c. Not all the power, of course - there's no substitute for artistic talent and creativity in any sphere, and these advances tend to promote the spread of mediocre more than outstanding work.

It's sad to see the hatred and bitterness with which these advances are being treated by existing publishers, because I don't think they're as threatened as they think. People will still want good music, good books, good movies, &c, and there will still be money to be made providing them. It might not be with the exact same business model, or in the same form, but I'm sure sooner or later something will get sorted out. In the end, it's only the publishers of mediocre, worthless material who need fear. Which perhaps explains the current situation rather well...

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:Party...

[general_re]

And which team might that be?

My guess is that he's talking about the team that claims Senator Fritz Hollings (D-Disney), and therefore gave you this mess in the first place ;)

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)