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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."
Hatch and Leahy get loads of money from the media moguls to make millions of people criminals while guys like OJ can walk the streets. What an awesome legal system!
Trolling is a art,
Everyone, sit up and pay attention.
You have an easy, affordable way to crush them at their own game.
1. Make your own audio recordings of live music with a Minidisc recorder or DAT recorder. Get out to the pubs, your friends band, play your own music, whatever - get it recorded.
2. Get out of the chatrooms and onto that computer and start editing your own recordings using freely available tools.
3. Create Mp3's, Audio CD's and SHARE them with everyone. No hassles with copyrights.
4. You dont need Record Labels, Music Studios, Lawyers or Politicians.
5. Get out there and share your work with everyone.
- - - - - - - - -
Take this industry "Good ol' boy" network down. - Empower yourselves!
Go to GOOGLE now and find FREE resources for:
Home Recording
Minidisc Recorders
Mp3 Burning via PC
Audio Editing via PC
P2P networks (for your NON-copyrighted material)
It's simple, easy and cheap. Do it now.
-- GET THE WORD OUT ! --
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts", Earl Weaver - Legendary Coach of the Baltimore Orioles
Bzzzt. Wrong. This is exactly the kind of thinking that is only going to make the situation worse. Now, before you all write me off, please stop for just one second and allow yourselves to listen to me objectively....
P2P is not the solution; it is the problem. How the hell do you think we got to where we are now? Did the recording industry or the US Congress give two shits when people were trading pirated movies/music/software via IRC? Via FTP? Sure, sites got shut down and a few people were arrested, but was it anywhere near the level that we are now at? Nope. We didn't get to where we are now until Napster and the wave of P2P sharing began. Now, I know a common defense of P2P is that it does indeed have legitimate uses. I would never attempt to argue against this point, and I actually happen to agree with it. However, it would be outlandish to attempt to deny the fact that the overwhelming majority of content traded via P2P networks is pirated material. Would the industry/Congress/etc have even paid the least bit of attention to P2P if this was _not_ the case? Nope. With every single pirated file that was downloaded off of P2P networks the powers that be were pushed closer and closer to the point at which they simply had to do something. With IRC/FTP and the situation a few years ago, they could simply ignore the problem because the volume of traffic was so low as to be a non-issue. However, once Joe American and his friends were pirating massive quantites of content online they couldn't just ignore the issue any longer. P2P _forced_ them to act. And I can assure you that it this wasn't because of Mandrake ISOs being distributed through BitTorrent; it was due to the other 99.9% of P2P usage.
Sure, the penalites being imposed don't fit the crime. I'll give you that. Sure, the extensions to copyright and other intellectual property restrictions are overbearing. I'll agree with that as well. You want to stop being treated like criminals? Well then stop acting like them. With each act of your "non violent protest" you only prove that the threat of these penalities is a non-factor in people's decisions to pirate content online. As a result, we only get stiffer penalties and more draconian laws in an effort by the industry to add a larger sum to the left hand column of the subconscious cost/benefit analysis that occurs within the average person's mind before bootlegging content online. That is indeed the logic behind these laws; the stricter they get, the more likely it will be that people think twice before downloading pirated content.
You shouldn't be congratulating and encouraging people to pirate content via P2P networks as if it were some sort of moral imperative with equal gravity to most situations that truly deserve non violent protest. In doing so, you only make the problem worse and bring us closer and closer to the reality of Palladium and Trustworthy Computing. How's this for non violent protest: Don't buy their products. On second thought, you already meet that requirement... so how about you just don't download their content without paying for it. Instead, condemn and castigate those that do. By downloading their content, even if you haven't paid for it, you only prove to these companies that there is indeed a demand and a market for their products, in turn, legitimizing them as business entities.
If you haven't taken in what I've said, then I'll attempt to make it more clear through a final analogy. In the United States, people have the right to buy/own/and use lockpicks. However, despite this apparent right, we still have statutory restrictions on the sale/usage/distribution/etc of these items. This is because although lockpicks have legitimate uses, they can also be used illicitly to break the law. However, you don't see the restrictions on these items continually increasing and becoming more severe. This woul
-Matt
Duke '05