Copyright Law Mashup Moving Through Congress

The Importance of writes "The INDUCE Act may be dead (for now), but that doesn't mean that Congress won't pass any copyright laws this year. Right now, HR 4077, the "Piracy Deterrence in Education" bill pulls together a number of different initiatives to not only get the government involved in civil copyright enforcement, but change fundamental definitions in copyright, and make certain types of home video viewing illegal. The Senate version (brought to you by Sen. Hatch and Leahy) adds even more copyright law changes. According to Public Knowledge, 'The recording industry and Hollywood are making headway! Threatening bills are positioned to move possibly today or tomorrow (yes, even Saturday!) in the Senate and we need your help, now. Not only do they want to rewrite copyright law (again) to lower the standard required for criminal enforcement of copyright infringement; but now they're changing how you watch TV or DVDs in your own home! The bills (H.R. 4077 and H.R. 2391) also are written to make the way you use iTunes and WiFi a crime. '"

Comments

Fast-forwarding through commercials

[LihTox]

At first glance, it looks like this bill makes it illegal for people to fast forward through commercials, or even mute them (which would make their sound "imperceptible"). Looking at the law a little more closely, (there's probably a more direct source but I found Title 17 at http://floridalawfirm.com/copyr1.html), it seems that Section 110 of that Title is dealing with exemptions to copyright law, not with violations. That is, this current law might not be about making commercial-skipping illegal, butabout making it legal to skip offensive material in movies and the like.

The fact that such a clause should even be necessary points to the warped mindset of the **AAs, of course.

It could be useful to paint the bill as the "It will make it illegal to fast-forward through commercials!!" to get the word out.

IANAL, so I could very well be wrong.

Worsens penalties

[Ghostgate]

Worsens Penalties: Requiring the U.S. Sentencing Commission to modify its guidelines to significantly increase the criminal infringement sentences

Right. Because there's still a FEW crimes out there that actually have bigger penalties than copyright infringement! I know - I'm as shocked as the rest of you.

In all seriousness, WHY do you suppose copying a copyrighted music file illegally is already a felony in most cases (along with things like murder, kidnapping, and rape), whereas running into a store and swiping the actual CD is just a simple misdemeanor?

For those few who will no doubt comment on this article and say "blah blah, good - people swapping files are criminals and should be punished" I ask you this - does the punishment even come CLOSE to fitting the crime?

And now they want to make the punishment even more harsh?

This is not justice. It's a joke.

Re:Almost had me talked into it

[tvon]

Until I discovered that the so called Public Knowledge site had taken over Mozilla, and disabled my menu's for normal browser operations completely.

I wrote the software in question and there is no "menu disabling" code in there. The site has been live for over a year now and we have had no reports of your problem, perhaps you could be more specific about what is happening and where?

Feel free to message me with any additional information.

Regards,
Tom

Re:umm...

[hunterx11]

Don't worry, Emperor Norton I already abolished Congress in 1859.