File Trading Law Would Include 'Willing' Traders

mgessner writes "From InfoWorld comes a story on the U.S. House's approval of a new, tough law against trading files online. 'The bill expands the definition of file traders eligible for criminal penalties from individuals who 'willingly' distribute copyright files to those who 'knowingly' do so, an escalation that could result in jail time for file swappers.'" (The bill has yet to go through the Senate.)

Comments

Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2004

[daveschroeder]

The actual "Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2004" itself:

Index

Summary

Text of legislation

Re:Down with this bill

[jrockway]

Screw what the lawyers thing, we have technology to fight them. Try Freenet. It's mathematically impossible to determine what you're sharing! Try going to jail for sharing random bytes :-)

Re:The GPL is a copyright

[MBGMorden]

GPL is not a copyright. It's a license. GPL software can still be copyrighted, but so can any other closed source freeware program, so bringing up the GPL really has no bearing here.

Sponsor of the Bill, Representative Lamar Smith

[cOdEgUru]

is known to make party line stance on virtually all of the issues ever to encounter, that its hard to envisage this guy has ever in his life, thought for himself, used his god given intelligence to seperate himself (or others) from the party line rhetoric, or to atleast understand the laws he is responsible for passing in the house.

A few of his noted yes/no votes can shed a lot of light on where he stands on the issues:

(1)Voted YES on allowing school prayer during the War on Terror - Yes praying as a collective does help in cleansing terrorism.
(2)Voted YES on giving federal aid only to schools allowing voluntary prayer
(3)Voted NO on raising CAFE standards; incentives for alternative fuels - Wants to rely on Oil and dont want the Automobile industry to answer to better environmental standards.
(4)Voted NO on prohibiting oil drilling & development in ANWR. - Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, enough said!
(5)Voted YES on speeding up approval of forest thinning projects - Apparently want the rest of the US start looking like Texas (no offense).
(6)Voted YES on Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China - Yes, Cuba - BAD, China - GOOD!!
(7)Voted NO on $156M to IMF for 3rd-world debt reduction - Handouts are good when its to your automobile industry cronies and to big corporations, bad idea when its to third world countries.
(8)Voted NO on campaign finance reform banning soft-money contributions - No Finance Reform!! Period!
(9)Voted YES on decreasing gun waiting period from 3 days to 1 - By God! Yes, we all know how excruciatingly painful it is to wait 3 days for appropriate checks to be made..
(10)Voted NO on allowing reimportation of prescription drugs - We really believe you should pay 20$ for that tylenol pill instead of 30 cents if you were importing it from Canada.

What pisses me off is that even if Kerry wins this November, the senate and the house under Republican control will end up making him an acting president and not a real one. Not that I think a Democrat controlled house and senate is any better. I just want politicians to really understand the bills they sign and talk to people who these laws ultimately affect.

Bill needs exception

[LightSail]

Any copyright enforcement bill needs the exception for Senators that use unlicensed software:

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305, 00 .html

Re:So how did the congresscritters vote?

[mcmonkey]

"On a voice vote, the measure passed the House and will now be sent to the U.S. Senate."

A voice vote occurs when Members call out "Aye" or "No" when a question is first put by the Speaker. The Speaker will say, "As many as are in favor [of the question], say `Aye'." Then the Speaker will ask: "As many as are opposed, say `No'." http://www.house.gov/rules/voting_house.htm

So unless you were there to see your reps. say 'aye' or 'no' you don't know how they voted.

Full bill details with summary and status info: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:H.R.4 077:

YOU can make file sharing legal

[MichaelCrawford]

It is within your power to put a stop to this nonsense. But you have to act now.

In Change the Law I point out that while the Constitution allows for Congress to enact copyright laws, it doesn't actually require it to do so. Copyright could be repealed tomorrow if we could get enough votes in Congress to do so.

If you don't think this could happen, consider that there are more Americans sharing files via peer-to-peer networks than voted for George Bush in 2000.

In my article I detail a number of steps you can take to bring about much needed copyright reform. My suggestions are that you:

• Speak Out
• Vote
• Write to Your Elected Representatives
• Donate Money to Political Campaigns
• Support Campaign Finance Reform
• Join the Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Practice Civil Disobedience

If you feel as I do that more people need to read my article, you can help by linking to it from your website, weblog, or from other message boards.

If you're a US citizen and 18 years of age or over, you can vote in November. But to do that, you must be registered to vote in your state. The voter registration deadline for most states is just a few days away, October 2nd for most states. So register today! Rock the Vote can help you with registration.

If you're a US citizen residing in a foreign country like me (I live in Canada), you can register to vote with the form you can obtain from the Federal Voting Assistance Program. You can register to vote in the last state you resided in in the US. But again, your registration must be received by your state by the deadline, so either express your application, or fax it, if a fax number is available.

(If you've never lived in the US, but one of your parents was a US citizen, then you're a US citizen too and you can register in the last state your parent resided in.)

If you want to make a campaign donation, a good choice would be Representative Rick Boucher. Rick Boucher has worked tirelessly for copyright reform, as you can see from his article Time to rewrite the DMCA.