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New California Law Bans Anonymous Media File Sharing
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like California will soon be requiring emails to share files. The story from SF Gate has a few details as Ahnold goes on his signing spree in Sacramento. 'Aiding the industry that helped him gain worldwide fame, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation Tuesday aimed at discouraging online piracy by requiring anyone disseminating movies or music on the Internet to disclose their e-mail address.' Also he signed a bill to limit the sale of video games."
Is it just me, or is it a violation of your rights(as an American)? I can think of situations where I could be sharing perfectly legal media, and would not want my email address/identity tied to it. For example, if I produced a documentary about how bad the company I work for is, I should be able to disperse that to those who please. There would most definitely be reprecussions if it was found out who made it, and this bill would just make it all the easier.
Does Californica not realize that the Internet will treat this as damage, and route around it? You can't make your tiny part of the Internet have different rules than the rest of the Internet. It just doesn't work. Unenforceable.
I doubt that even accomplishes anything. But if it does what it is intended to do, inform parents/consumers, more power to them. Parents should be aware when they are buying San Andreas for their kid.
As far as the email is concerned? Ludicrously unenforceable, so I'm not paying attention to it.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
This seems like it's making the same old assumptions. That *if* it's music or video, then the copyright *must* be owned by RIAA/MPAA. This is all about control, not copyrights.
If I own the copyright (say because I produced it), or I have the permission of the copyright owner (which may be, gasp, somebody besides the **AA); then WHY in the world can't I do with it what I want? I certainly can give somebody a copy of a book in secrety; or even leave a copy of a newspaper on my chair when I'm done reading it (which is anonymous distribution).
Oh, and what about PUBLIC DOMAIN media files?
See, this whole thing still seems to be the big media industries trying to shut out independent artisits and producers of content. The whole piracy thing is just a smokescreen; the excuse. What they really want is to make it illegal or impossible for anybody besides them to "traffic" in media.
Is probably not constitutional. You can't stop a willing group of participants from engaging in anonymous conversation with each other.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Anything I make (or anything anyone else makes) is automatically copyrighted by the person or organization that made it. Does this mean I can't post to /. without showing my email, because that would be sharing copyrighted media? Is the only legal anonymous transfer one that only is composed of public domain works? Ug... good thing this isn't anywhere near enforcable.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
* Who is the email provided to?
* How is the email to be provided?
* Is this only for legal files haring? (I would assume so)
* How are email addresses verified?
* If the file sharing app has to provide a way to advertise an email, does this make app incapable of this illegal?
* Are FTP and websites affected by this law?
* What if I don't have an email address?
* What if my address is with Yahoo? Will my information be required to be given to lawyers by Yahoo or whomever my ISP is?
* How did this law get passed?
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Precisely. Stacking charges. This allows the prosecutor's to have 12 charges against you intsead of one. They can then plea bargain down to just one or two charges if you plead guilty. This means prosecutors get their 90%+ conviction records they want if they want to become DA or something, and a lot of innocent people go to jail because they take the plea bargain rather than go through a costly trial at the risk of even longer jail time.
live(free) || die;
What ever happened to a person's constitutionally protected right not to incriminate themselves? I'm pretty sure such a law would be blatantly unconstitutional.
Keith D.
video != copyrighted video
music != copyrighted music
The law is overbroad in assuming that any transmission is going to be an illegal one. The works in question could be your own works or those where the owner has given explicit permission for redistribution.
This law would also prevent the anonymous distribution of audio and video with political content. It would make illegal the multimedia equivalent of the Federalist Papers.
NO, this is not just about music piracy.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This is what you call feel-good legislation. It makes the RIAA/MPAA lobbying groups feel like they're getting something for their efforts. Any technical person knows the law is meaningless (how hard is it to sign up for an annonymous Hotmail account?) and that it will not affect filesharing at all. But I say let the lobbyists have their petty victory. Maybe it will make them feel like they got something accomplished and they won't try as hard to buy a law that has a truly chilling effect.
I'd have more confidence in the intelligence of the RIAA/MPAA than the intelligence of the government. This isnt a feel good situation for the entertainment industry that we should just blow off as irrelevant just because it looks meaningless on the surface.
This in fact has a lot of meaning, it means the industry has yet another foot hold in our legal system. Once a law has made it into the system, it's damn hard to get it out. You watch, in a year, they'll be lobbying that it's not effective enough, and it will be even easier to add new rules to whats already there second time around.
This is a common strategy, you see it all over the place. Take away a little freedom, get people used to it, then take a little more.
And whats especially disturbing are the heavy ties with the entertainment industy that Mr. Schwartznegger has, it's pretty obvious who he's looking out for.
Computers may as well be flat out banned then. Any operating system that allows saving of files is "file sharing software". A user could save to a device, and then connect the device to another computer. OMG, filesharing!!!
My patience is infinite, my time is not.