'Pirate Act' Would Shift Copyright Civil Suits To DoJ

mammothboy writes "News.com.com has a story about the new so-called Pirate Act, which seeks to allow federal prosecuters to file civil suits against file swappers. These lawsuits can reach hundreds of thousands of dollars, and if you guessed that the RIAA is lobbying for it, you're right. What's scary is how fast and how quiet its march through the legislative process has been. In '97, the No Electronic Theft Act allowed for criminal lawsuits, but none have been filed, so isn't it clear that the Justice Department has better stuff to deal with?" There actually have been some prosecutions filed under the NET Act, but not many. Update: 05/26 18:51 GMT by T : Declan McCullagh (author of the linked News.com story) writes to clarify: "FYI there have been prosecutions under the NET Act, as you say. But there have not been any of P2P users. That's why the Senate is doing this."

Comments

Virginia Slashdotters...

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

...be sure to drop a note to Rep. Rick Boucher! He has consistently been one of the few (and by few, I mean only) politicians who isn't totally in the pocket of the RIAA and their ilk. (cough cough... Orrin Hatch... cough cough) He recognizes the rights of copyright holders to make a fair buck off their work, but he also draws a damned firm line on the rights of citizens to control the things they've paid for. And if you're not in Virginia, he'll still listen to your opinions. It's about time we started paying attention to the pols who *haven't* been bought and paid for yet.

http://www.house.gov/boucher/

(Having been raised Mormon, I also have a lot of other reasons to bitch about Hatch, but I'll save that for later. That whole state is run by asshats.)

Figures it involved Orrin Hatch

[Stargoat]

It figures that Orrin Hatch is one of the sponsers. The Republican from Utah has been doing this stuff for years now. The guy thinks he is a musician, and is worried that pirating music could hurt other musicians. Last year, Orrin Hatch was the jackass who advocated developing technology to destroy the computers of people who download music. It was one of Hatch's staffer's who broke into a democrat's computer and read his docs. Hatch himself was found to have pirated some software a while back as well to host his website.

Hatch's boy is one of the lawyers for the SCO. No surprise there. Daddy's just trying to make the laws for his baby boy to enforce.

Call your senators (you have two) and tell them to oppose this bill. If you don't know who they are, go here to find out.

And so we move to anonymous networks... eg.FreeNet

[ControlFreal]

And there we go again... Apart from the fact that I find the influence that big industries have on the justice system in the US nauseating, the music industry seems to think that it can "stop" swapping in any way. This is typical black and white thinking

What is actually happening here is that the "system" (in this case the swappers and the music industry together) shift to a new equilibrium location, where the trade-off between speed and ease-of-use on the one hand, and speed on the other hand, is optimal for the given situation on the legal battle-field.

First we had Napster: very easy to use, but having the flaw of a single point of failure. Then we had the FastTrack and Gnutella networks (think KaZaa and LimeWire here): good bandwidth, but no anonymity at all, but at least without the need for a single point of failure. Then came eDonkey and his friends: less bandwidth, more obfuscation. A step further along the line lies FreeNet: anonimity beyond reasonable doubt, but a slow network and it's hard to find things. In the future, the balance might shift even further to the side of obfuscation, encryption and low bandwidth.

Now before you start yelling: "But FreeNet doesn't work!". Think again: Since about mid-May, it works well again! Try it!

So: go to their website and download that client! Happy browsing!