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

[RickHunter]

Want to know why you sit back and let it happen? Because the media tells you to, and you're conditioned to listen to the media. Just like the media told you Howard Dean was unelectable that, against all evidence, he'd be a bad president... And you blindly followed as they lead you into the arms of the beast. So now you've got to choose between John Bush and G. W. Kerry.

Hope you enjoy another four years of the Bush. Its not like you've got any choice.

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

[cyberchondriac]

Hey, to each their own spin. Really, what is "but I digress", but a quick shot and withdrawal with the hopes of avoiding a counter shot? ;-)
We're getting offtopic but.. oh what the heck:
One can argue that CNN spins in the other direction, IMO, so in a way, "fair and balanced" means the news media overall.
Okay, so Foxnews doesn't mean it that way, and sure, they're slanted right,( even more so on weekends, oddly ) but when ya lump them all together, you get a soupy mix that has something approaching more even coverage than you traditionally get from the CNNs and Dan Rathers of the world. Also, Foxnews often puts a liberal punduit in the hot seat, so to speak, but at least he/she gets some airtime before getting shot down in flames. The other networks often don't do that much for the other side - you just hear the one side. Funny thing is how Foxnews has become the posterchild for conserative TV news, when some of the reporting I saw out of MSNBC during the height of the Iraq war was waaay more right-wing, and Michael Savage (until he got fired) was much right-wing than say, Bill O'Reilly.

<Off soapbox now>

BTW, that first cast of SNL rocked ! I'm old enough to remember, and it was never the same after the first cast; that was SNL at it's peak, but I think you had to be there. Just one question: what the heck ever happened to Lorraine Newman ?