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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.)
The GPL is a copyright so does this make it illegal to download opensource software?
Because we all know that passing laws to make, say, speeding in cars, murder, fraud etc. illegal has put an end to all those activities.
That being said, I feel it's important to note that what needs evaluating isn't the violation of copyright, rather, the purpose and effect of copyright itself.
From the article:
Detractors of the legislation claim that the measure would not stop the trading of copyright files and will not help the entertainment industry find a way to ensure artists get paid for the distribution of their works.
Well, what law has ever stopped a crime. Laws (theoretically) just reduce crime (but, obviously not in all cases).
Also, from the article:
"Putting downloaders behind bars, or decimating their college funds with civil lawsuits, won't put the genie of peer-to-peer technology back in the bottle or put real money in the pockets of real artists," P2P United's Eisgrau said in an e-mail interview with IDG News Service earlier this week.
This is the smartest thing I've read about file sharing in general to date.
P.S.: What is the difference between knowingly and willingly?
I suspect that those software engineers will set sail east across "the pond" in search of a land were they can have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Rights that many in our government are trying to take away [if you aren't "with them"]. We tried it over here, it worked for about 224 years and at last the western empire is starting to crumble.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
To me, "knowingly" implies that a file is being shared with the user's knowledge. Whereas "willingly" implies the user made a conscious choice to share the file.
What's the difference, legally speaking?
I guess that at least it will help make the racial composition of our gulag system more representative of the population in general.
My google-fu must be on the fritz today; I can't find a website telling me how representatives voted on this bill. Can anyone else do better?
While I agree with you in that the punishment absolutely does not fit the crime, I believe it's a little narrow-minded to say that it's only "Right Wing Assholes" who are resposible for the entertainment industry's current stance on file trading, even if this one particular bill was sponsored by a Texas Democrat. Most of Hollywood and the various eMpTV voice pieces are overwhelming liberal (I'd say the term "Left Wing Assholes") applies. And BTW, does the name Fritz Hollings ring any bells?
What Slashbots say they want and what they actually want are often very different, and often contradictory.
They insist that the GPL is a valid lisense and (rightfully) insist that it be respected and enforced. However they sing a very different tune (no pun intended) when it comes to copyrighted music.
The average Slashbot just doesn't want to pay for music, and will make any (other) argument to justify violating copyright law.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
So what is stopping someone from sharing over an open WiFi connection? Does this bill have provisions for protecting those who share their connectivity freely as in beer? (I am assuming that the IP address and ISP logs are used to identify convict . . . uh potential infringers).
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Let me slightly re-edit and repeat something I previously posted to /.
Concerning Freenet, countless times I've read that once you've been online for a while you will find that you achieve downloads more quickly, and you will have a better experience. However, after a couple of weeks of continuous use, my Freenet experience is no better than at the beginning - awful. It's slow. It's impossible to browse around at random to get the feel of the place. It's extremely difficult to find anything. Unless I'm missing something major, it's nigh onto unuseable.
Would somebody please tell me how Freenet is supposed to work? I must be missing something because what I'm seeing surely isn't what was intended unless the designers just happen to like dishing out pain...
A good read for those interested.
How the music biz can live forever, get even richer, and be loved
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
i've watched enough law and order to hear the line of questioning in a court case...
a.d.a. -- "so mr. criminal, why did you knowingly share copywritten files on the internet?"
suspect -- "i didn't know i was sharing files"
a.d.a -- "oh come now. surely you had some idea that by installing kazaa, gaim, bit torrent, edonkey, or any of those products on to your home pc that were going to be sharing files. didn't you?"
suspect -- "no...i had no idea"
a.d.a. -- "let me get this straight. you built your own pc, self-installed the operating system, overclocked your cpu by manipulating those little toggle switches on the motherboard but you didn't take the time to read a faq about the p2p program you installed on your computer?"
suspect: "no. i didn't"
a.d.a. -- "so you are saying that you pay careful attention to every detail about your pc except for the software that's commonly used to share files?"
suspect: "that's correct"
a.d.a. -- "so then you knew that this software was going to be used to share files?"
and with that statement...the suspect has convicted themselves and the jury returns a guilty verdict.
the trouble is that we have a congress that pays attention to the people who stand to make money on the passage of this law (the mpaa, riaa, and other copyright holders) while ignoring the voice of the people who are going to be stuck paying for these copyrights (the consumers).
add to that the additional burden that consumers bear with having to be manipulated into buying media which has copy protection schemes which limit playing a cd so that you would someday conceivably need one licensed copy for your house, one for your car, one for your portable media device, and perhaps one for your pc.
Is it 5:30 yet?
I watched with horror as this bill came to the floor on CSPAN yesterday. It only highlighted how poorly our government is run.
For half an hour, the proposing legislator used the work "piracy" as many times as he could, which by itself shows that they cannot distinguish piracy from infringement, and therefore shouldn't be allowed to write copyright legislation, much less comment on it. These scare tactics are unacceptable.
Furthermore, there were maybe 5 or 10 representatives listening. What exactly are they paid to do if not sit there, read the bills, and vote on them? Very eye opening!
And finally, as the representative said, "for the efficiency of time," this house resolution also includes a proposition that the oak tree be the national tree. Wow, copyright, and trees. I see the relation.
Ugh.
The right analogy would be "But officer, I didn't know I was selling heroin to second graders. The wholesaler told me that this white powder was sugar and I believed him."
Crime is exponential in nature. America's population is as much as 5 times larger then some of the places you listed (or places you may have implied), the exact rate of increase I don't know, but I do know that means that America's murder rate should be significantly higher then 5 times what ever country you sampled. The following data was pulled from here. Now unfortunately the data is slightly old, but for everything I'm citing, its all less then a decade, which is reasonable. As stated earlier, the United States' population is approx. 5 times that of England's, because of the exponential increase in crime, our numbers should be at least (if not much higher) then 5 times England's. However, the United State's total homicide numbers are only 4.04 times larger. It seems we are doing something right. Our homicides by firearms are significantly larger, but all that this proves is that if you take away someone's gun, there are still plenty of ways to kill someone, and the folks from England seem to do just fine in finding alternatives. Germany seems to be doing pretty good as far as first world countries go, and interestingly enough, they fall just in range of a reasonable exponential increase when comparing them to the US. It seems that despite all of the hype that England gets for its gun laws, something is still lacking. Keep in mind, that Germany and America both have a significantly higher number of households with guns then England does. So although our numbers are large, they are no worse then is expected and better then Englands when you take into account other factors. My point being that humans will kill regardless of what you give them (or take away). Most murders, as far as the US goes, and I'd assume the rest of the world in general, is crime on crime anyway. Some would argue that we should just let the criminals keep killing eachother, whether you find that a sane oppinion is a personal preference. ( I personally would change that statement around a bit,as crime on crime murders still do affect normal law abiding citizens) I hope this helps in getting a better oppinion or at least a more clear picture from a different point of view.
Regards,
Steve
How can you trust anything they say? Let alone a statistic that they're spouting off to make themselves feel important?
Do you remember the news article of how a couple people were arrested for running a "monstrous CD pirate factory"? It was written that they had about 50 CD Burners running non-stop. Turns out it was only 6 CD burners, but they multiplied it by a factor of X, because cd burners are X times faster than they used to be.
So the movie industry is trying to tell Congress how important they are. They try to credit themselves for 5% of the U.S. GDP. I agree that sounds impressive. But the US GDP is about 10 Trillion dollars. 5% of that is 500 Billion dollars. Obviously, the movie industry is only a fraction of that. What makes up the other 90% of that 5%? Music, TV, books, games, software... Anything relating to copyright.
The movie industry is in competition with other entertainment markets. For me, namely computer games, since they're the highest rising related market. Yet when it comes to looking 'bigger', they'll gladly include themselves in the bigger group. When they fight for laws, it's laws to protect the movie industry.
It is now a felony to video record inside a movie theator. Movie sales are 2 billion dollars a year, so that is 0.02% of the GDP.
What I would like to see stats for is what percentage of "all this money" they have goes to the actual workers vs. executives. I'm sure the Music Industry would find themselves at the bottom of that chart, so you dont' see them bragging about that.
I'm all for fair laws. But when shoplifting 100 CD's carries less fines & jail time than potentially sharing 900 songs, I think there's something wrong. Selling drugs inside a movie theator gets you less than the felony that the video taper will now get.
Want fair laws? Let's fine each of the music executives 500% of their annual salary each time they're caught price fixing! We will "let" them settle out of court if they pay 30% of their annual salary.
If a student has to fork over $4,500 dollars they don't own (or face $300,000 if they lose) then I think it's only fair. Why are millions of americans "crooks", when it's the music executives themselves who have been busted at least twice for price fixing. Not to mention sued thousands of times by artists for breach of contract, and a million other things that don't make headline news.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
I don't want MY tax dollars to be wasted with this nonsense.
Newsflash: Corporations pay taxes too. Ever stop and think that maybe its their taxes that are funding these prosecutions?
I don't want that money wasted prosecuting swappers.
I believe the ??AA themselves are the ones doing the prosecuting, and thus, paying for the litigation. I suppose public dollars may be going towards the defendants' legal bills, but public defenders are relatively cheap, and these are people who, after all, broke the law.
I don't want that money wasted imprisoning swappers.
AFAIK, copyright infringement is a civil crime, not a felony. That means no prison time. They'll be fined. Do you have any evidence to suggest that file swappers are actually being jailed?
I don't care to bear the social costs of ruining the lives of swappers.
"Ruining the lives?" How is a $3000 civil settlement "ruining their lives?" Besides, there's an easy way to avoid having your life "ruined" by a fine: DON'T BREAK THE LAW!
Do you know anything? Everything you said was so far off-base, I can only conclude you are either trolling, or fantastically ignorant. Care to end my suspense?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Somebody needs to organize a campaing to ruthlessly enforce these laws on the close friends and family of the Representatives which passed this legislation.
:\
Maybe, just maybe, if the gun they were bribed for started shooting people they cared about, they would think twice about 'doing a favor' for corporate lobbyists?
But then again, maybe not....
The U.S. government pays me to do research on reactive chemistry. I am required to move very large files across networks. I am afraid that this movement of files might be misconstrued as illegal file sharing by corporations that can put me in jail. Is it important for me to continue doing research for the government that also may allow corporations to accuse me of file sharing based solely on large amounts of local area network traffic?
The answer is that I should probably quit using a computer in order to preserve my status as a non-felon.
Does this mean that my brother in Georgia (I live in Texas) can't send me digital photos that he has taken. The photographs are copyrighted and he is using AIM for file sharing, so this fits the criteria for the law. Furthermore would AOL be fined if people used AIM to file share. It would be shccking for the government to bring charges on the largest ISP in America for sponsoring a service that supports file sharring. I'm probably wrong but oh well...
Freenet is kind of slow, look at the 2nd generation of anonymous P2P
applications:
AntsP2P
I2P
Freenet is kind of slow, look at the 2nd generation of anonymous P2P applications:
AntsP2P
I2P