PIRATE Act Introduced in Congress

certron writes "Xeni Jardin has written a story for Wired about the "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004" aka the PIRATE Act. It and another related bill are designed to criminalize P2P filesharing by lowering the burden of proof for law enforcement and proposing jail terms of up to 10 years. The bill was introduced by Sens. Orrin Hatch and Patrick Leahy, both of whom received large contributions from the entertainment industries. Under the bill, even sharing a single file (if a judge decides the value is over $10,000) could land a user in jail. Read the full text of Orrin Hatch's remarks."

Comments

Re:Ways around this

[nertz_oi]

are you joking?

read this please.

Consituents speak out

[plankers]

The way to stop this sort of thing is to be a constituent of Hatch or Leahy. If you are one, make it clear to them that they will not get re-elected with behaviour like this. And then tell your neighbors, friends, coworkers, etc. what these two guys are up to, and ask them outright to never vote for them again.

The rest of the country cannot get these two corrupt, entertainment industry pawns out of office. Only Vermont and Utah residents can. Do not re-elect these two. While it might seem they are doing good, they are doing long-term damage to the country, including your states.

Send a message to Leahy

Send a message to Hatch

Please do it now before these two turn the U.S. citizens into entertainment industry criminals and slaves, and infect every other nation with these ideas.

Read the article before submitting it

[humblecoder]

If you are going to criticize the PIRATE act, first do your homework and learn about it.

The PIRATE Act bill, the one sponsored by Sens Hatch and Leahy, gives the DOJ the power to pursue civil cases against file sharers. According to the article and Sen Hatch's remarks, it does not have the provisions about "up to 10 years in prison" or any of that stuff. According to the article, those provisions are part of a draft bill that hasn't been introduced. The description in the slashdot posting imply that these provisions are part of the PIRATE Act, which they are not.

It may seem like splitting hairs, but if you start writing to your Congresspeople about the PIRATE Act, you will have more credibility if you actually know what you are talking about. If you start talking about provisions that aren't even in the bill, your letter will probably receive very little, if any, consideration.

Hatch's and Leahy's $$

[macdaddy]

For those that are interested...

Orrin Hatch: TV/Movies/Music $152,360

Patrick Leahy: TV/Movies/Music $178,000

Re:Excuse me while I smash my head into the wall.

[Jim Starx]

That's false. I work at a recording studio. We have several steady customers that come to us for recording their cd's. They distribute their cd's over the internet which brings them some profit but mainly serves to drum up intrest in their live shows which provide for the majority of their income. These aren't even locally large names, very smalltime. But the formula holds true for larger artists. Record sales pay the record company, artist profit from touring. Only the most wildly successfull albums make enough money for the artist to see a sizeable return after the record company takes it's cut.