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US To Push Criminalization of IP Violations
Dr.Hair writes "
Soon to be ex-Secretary of Commerce Don Evans speaks out on 'piracy' just prior to his last trip to China for negotiations. 'That means criminalizing the laws as opposed to (having) just civil laws...You've got to start putting people in jail.'
The article points out that this lust for prosecutions extends from Evans to his successor, the American Chamber of Commerce, and the US Senate. "
this title and /. article is highly misleading. did the poster rtfa?
this is about the usa pushing for china to start putting people in jail for counterfeiting. that IS widely acknowledged as "piracy."
sum.zero
For a change, I RTFA. They're pushing for the Chinese to start putting Chinese counterfeiters in jail under the rules of Chinese law.
While it might be a short leap for the same people to start calling for the criminalization of copyright infringement in the US, that's not what we're talking about here.
Bush was up here in Canada last month (i think) twisting the arms of the Canadian Government to stop the sale of drugs online. Our gov't agreed and shut down a bunch of retailers losing about 4500 jobs in the process. So much for being an autonomous nation.
Coincidentally, the very next day, our beef was now allowed back over the border into the U.S. Even when they found ANOTHER case of BSE the very next day. hmmm. One was enough to kill our industry last year.. but this one's ok? I smell a rat.
As our now dead ex-Prime Minister Trudeau used to say, "Living next to America is like sleeping with an elephant."
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
RTFA, which begins, "China has 'got to start putting people in jail.'"
As far as I know, only copyright infringement for commercial gain is a criminal offence, otherwise its just a civil offence.
This goes beyond just the US and CDs and DVDs. For example, the Chinese were considering building a maglev train system. So the German companies ThyssenKrupp and Siemens build a prototype. Workers for the German companies videotaped Chinese engineers poking around at 3am. Shortly after, the Chinese said they would use their own newly development maglev technology for the trains instead of the buying the German tains. They may even be able to export maglev trains at half the price of the German or Japanese trains.
A 3 strike misdemeanor resulting in life? I don't remember ever hearing of disturbing the peace being a felony ANYWHERE in the US nor do I think any state has a three strikes misdemeanor law and definitely not one that results in life in prison.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S. Thompson
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Jail doesn't work.
Sure it does. It maintains status quo for those who make the rules and those that pay for the rules to be written -- rich people and corporations.
The US currently incarcerates more people per capita than any other country. To me, its an indicator of how fragile our society really is. I mean apartheid was maintained with fewer people in prison than the US society. I believe that its almost 2% of the US total population is either incarcerated or on parole or somehow else "in the system".
Its also interesting that jails and prisons are pretty much populated with poor uneducated people. A bright person with money can be much more successful than one without those qualities to either avoid getting busted in the first place or escape incarceration in the event of getting busted. Regardless of the truth of OJ's guilt or innocence, he would be in prison if he were not a multimillionaire.
What's sick is that we simply put up with this crap. Americans used to be headstrong people that stood up for their beliefs. We came here mostly due to persecution in one form of another. We used to have sayings like "taxation without representation" and whatnot. I guess one thing that makes these control efforts more successful today is that they do tend to prey on uneducated under-financed individuals.
The perfect example is incarceration for "illegal" drug possession. More lower middle class white people do drugs than any other group, but jails and prisons are predominately occupied by lower class non-whites.
Some very informal searching yielded a California case where a person had PREVIOUSLY plead guilty to "criminal threats" which "amounted to felony disturbing the peace" which later acted as a strike when the person committed another felony.
l
http://www.socallawblog.com/archives/001885.htm
Nothing other than that...
Yeah, to bring China's laws into compliance with our criminal copyright laws. US rarely enforces felony copyright, but several TENS OF MILLIONS of American technically belong in prison right now under the insane N.E.T. act. In particular it redefined US CODE TITLE 17 (Copyright) CHAPTER 5 506. Criminal offenses Criminal Infringement such that "(1) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain" now includes simple P2P use.
Yep, if you use a P2P program and upload a single file and download a single file, you are now deemed to qualify as a commercial enterprize engaging in industrial scale copyright infringment for financial gain. Criminal Infringement.
But heay, on the bright side the penaltys for only uploading a single copy of some song the maximum sentence is just a year in prison. You have to hit "at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500" before you qualify for 5 years in prison.
On the other hand you can get 10 years in prison if it is your second offence, say uploading a single copy of the copyrighted song "Happy Birthday".
Yep, get caught for uploading and downloading a single song, then get caught uploading and downloading a single song a second time, and you are eligible to 10 years in prison.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Not anymore. The "No Electronic Theft Act" (aka NET Act) of 1997 makes it a felony to reproduce or distribute copies of copyrighted works, even if there is no profit.
Texas has a three-strikes misdemeanor law under which a third-offense Class B misdemeanor can be "enhanced" to a Class A. Similarly, a third-offense Class A misdemeanor can be enhanced to a third degree felony (2-10 years), so theoretical, a fifth-offense Class A felony could get you a life sentance.
Now, Class A misdemeanors are, as a general rule, fairly serious offenses, seeing as how they are punishable by up to a year in jail and/or a fine of up to $4,000. Texas's Class A misdemeanors include Aggravated Assault, Negligent Homicide, and such friendly acts as Unlawful Restraint (a 'minor' form of kidnapping) and various theft/fraud offenses involving property having $500-$1500 in value.
If someone is facing trial for a fifth offense for crimes of this nature maybe they SHOULD face a life sentence. Speaking in the abstract I really can't say.
utter rubbish
2) In most places, a first offense for possession of small amounts of marijuana is a misdemeanor.
There are very few places where marijuana is a misdemeanor:
http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=4516
Lots of them, here and here.
The 12% number is off, but the 25% number is correct. The US does have the largest prison population in the world, both as an absolute number and in percentage terms. More than China and Russia, and 5 to 8 times the rates of Canada and Western European countries. And a lot of people are there for nonviolent drug offenses, including this 25-year-old who's going to be in prison until age 81, with no chance of parole.
I wish this insanity would stop, although I don't hold out much hope at the rate things are going.