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Copyright Law Mashup Moving Through Congress

Posted by michael on from the smoke-filled-rooms dept.

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. '"

1 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. Almost had me talked into it by Almost-Retired · · Score: 1, Troll

    Until I discovered that the so called Public Knowledge site had taken over Mozilla, and disabled my menu's for normal browser operations completely. What I was going to do was print the page so that I could make the calls during normal office hours tomorrow.

    Then I discovered that even backing out to slashdots main page did not restore them and I had to quite Mozilla and restart it to restore the menus.

    When a page does that, then my confidence in what else they might do becomes highly suspect.

    I'm with Lawrance Lessig, who states in his new book that its time to redo the law when the literal interpretation of the law by the courts redefines 50 million+ otherwise law abiding citizens as felons. Felons who lose their voting rights and everything else that goes along with that label once it has been applied by a judge or jury.

    For those who object to the fact that the likes of our Senators are all on Jack Valanti's payroll in the form of huge campaign contributions to those who vote for the RIAA/MPAA's extremely one sided view of copyright, the real cure is to work to elect senators and representatives who will govern as the people who elected him/her want them to govern. That is, after all is said and done, the premise of this 230 year old experiment in "Democracy" is it not?

    OTOH, I agree with a fellow named Ed Howdershelt, whose message is in my sig. Right about now the emphasis is on the ballot box (if we can keep the Diebolds from stuffing it), next is the jury box, hopefully a little harder to stuff, the difficulty there is in secureing the indictment in the first place. And finally, failing that, the ammo box...

    Cheers, Gene
    "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
    soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
    -Ed Howdershelt (Author)