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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."
A bunch of college kids are sharing copyrighted corporate products (music and maybe movies), so we have to put them in prison because people who share music and movies online are a bunch of child molesters and terrorists. Yeah, makes sense to me.
This is the kind of thing that Frank Zappa warned us was going to happen.
Sure, we say it all the time, "Corporations are running the country," meaning that corporations have undue influence over lawmakers; but it's getting to the point that we're going to have to find a stronger statement, like "Corporations are completely and utterly in charge of every aspect of our daily lives, using the government and their nearly exclusive control of all media content to keep it that way." Or something shorter if we can think of it.
Mein Gott, what can we do?
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Laws like this make me proud to live in a backwards country such as Canada.
I hear ya man..
I think there will soon be a market in junkets to Canada for Americans that will want to (smoke pot|buy cheap prescription drugs|download movies and music)
I have 2 spare bedrooms for rent!
Trolling is a art,
Out of curiousity.
Some time ago on Slashdot the possibility of a "geek PAC" was discussed.
This is a quesiton somewhat along the same lines. Essentially:
Exactly how much money would it require to do whatever necessary to* remove Mr. Orrin Hatch from a position of legislative power in the United States government?
I think you could find a variety of private citizens, from a number of corners, who would be ecstatic to donate to such a cause, due to the probable benefit it would have in terms of protecting the civil rights, artistic expression, and technological progress of this nation. Slashdotters annoyed at his attempts to introduce increasingly violent anti-file-sharing bills are just the tip of the iceberg.
* legally
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Sure, we say it all the time, "Corporations are running the country," meaning that corporations have undue influence over lawmakers; but it's getting to the point that we're going to have to find a stronger statement, like "Corporations are completely and utterly in charge of every aspect of our daily lives, using the government and their nearly exclusive control of all media content to keep it that way."
Social evolution in action: corporations are more efficient -- better adapted to their environment -- than nation-states.
Nation-states, in their day, were more efficient than kingdoms; which were more efficient than city-states; which were more efficient than tribes; which were more efficient than individuals.
I don't like it, but I accept that it's nature's way: the strong flourish, the weak fail.
Mein Gott, what can we do?
About corporate power? We can do nothing.
Live your life well, try to bring more love than hate into the world. That's all. No big stuff -- no Revolution, no Topple the State, no Stop the Corporations. Work to your scale, as an individual; the rest is History.
-kgj
-kgj
Weird, Part of it says that more powers needs to be given to law enforcement to combat "Piracy" but then it contridictoraly says that, most antipiracy legislation has been unseccessfull. Um, whats the point then?
:)
Also, out of the blue it suddenly throws in pornography? What is it about republicans and this constant crusade to stop porn? Someone please contact this fool and tell him that PORN IS NOT ILLEGAL! Sorry, when they start going after our porn, thats when they have GONE TOO FAR!
"Tens of thousands of continuing civil enforcement actions might be needed to generate the necessary deterrence." -- US Senator Orrin Hatch The "tends of thousands" phrase sounds more like a declaration of war against the citizens of America by the increasingly corporate owned government of ours. When 1.5 million people are downloading today in America, most of which are law abiding citizens that don't traffic in drugs, commit violent crimes, and pay for their groceries. Could this have happened if the RIAA and MPAA were not busy purchasing our congressional representatives? How do we stop this? I don't just mean the bill, I mean how do we stop the trend. How do we get politicians to represent the people again? One question I have is how are we a representative democracy if we are no longer represented? After years of this news growing, I still have not seen a coordinated large-scale effort to restore balance in our government so that it truly represents the people, and respects our principals. While I consider myself a free market capitalist, and personally choose not to download music that the creators do not offer for free, I completely disagree with treating the American people as dissidents, as this bill and other are increasingly doing. Is China becoming more like us, or are we becoming more like them?
Open Standards Portal
It's gotten pretty interesting in a purely scholarly way. We have a backlogged stockpile of literally 100 years of audio and video entertainment now. I mean, how much can a person consume? Entertainment _should_, by economic laws of supply and demand, be as cheap as tap water.
Ergo, draconian protectionism. Something has to give.