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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. "
They're pushing hard for "three strikes" laws, and at the federal level.
This is really bad, because it takes away the one power a judge really has - the power to look at the merits of a case and decide an appropriate sentence.
But, I read a story of some guy who was charged with disturbing the peace (he cussed out some kid working at a movie theater), and as his "third strike", he's now a lifer. His original two charges were nothing major, a couple assault charges that could probably be chalked up to drunken assholery.
The bitch of it is, we all have to pay for all these convicts.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Is breaking into a person's server or blogsite and messing with the contents any different from breaking in to a person's house/business and messing around? In both cases peoples "space" and privacy have been violated.
Is defacing a website any different from spraying graffiti on someones walls?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I have no problem with criminal laws regarding piracy and IP as long as those are only for people who are doing it FOR PROFIT AND (not or) ON A MASS SCALE.
So factories in China silkscreening counterfeit DVDs that are being stamped out and sold apply.BUT, the law needs to be very clear and unambiguous that it can't be used against someone uploading for free on BitTorrent or just selling a couple copies to his buddies. Those violations need to remain solely in the realm of civil litigation. The government should not be in the business of enforcing IP rights.
I think Don Evans was not talking about people downloading music. I think he was speaking about companies in China who pirate software, movies, machine part designs, etc... and then sell them.
It is selling it that makes it different than downloading music.
Setting aside your own personal feelings on the matter, what impact does rampant software piracy in China have on their status as a WTO member? I would think that some level of adherance to copyright/IP laws are a factor in maintaining good standing.
Anyone more informed than I have any thoughts?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Remember folks, MS was convicted of infringing someone's IP..does this mean finally MS will face legal accoutnability for being a monopolist?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
"This [the U.S. Constitution] is likely to be administered for a course of years and then end in despotism... when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other."
Benjamin Franklin
Everyone has done one of the following: tried drugs, infringed a copyright, exceeded the speed limit, drank alcohol underage, bought a violent video game for someone under 18, etc...
Your point is well taken but in most locations none of the things you listed will currently get you jail time. An important broken link in your criminalization chain is the police. The job of the police is to enforce the law through arrests and investigations. They only enforce a very small subset of the laws because the police don't really have much better of an idea what the laws are than the average citizen. They enforce the laws their bosses tell them to, and don't bother digging through law books for other things that are criminal.
I've always taken issue with the staggering number of incomprehensible, obscure, and contradictory laws. We certainly are all breaking laws on the books every day. Every child in our country knows that it is not fair to be punished for something that one was not informed was against the rules. If you tell any man, woman, or child that all the rules they need to follow are gathered in the three sets of legal volumes, consisting of millions of pages, stored in three different locations and written in a mishmash of english, old english, and latin, every one of them will realize the ridiculousness of being held responsible for breaking one of those rules. Instead we all follow a "common law" that is an amalgamation of rumors, common sense, and here-say. If the television show "Law and Order" were to start making up new laws and showing them being enforced, half the police officers and citizens in the country would start believing that they actually existed. Heck, some of the lawyers would buy it too. Hammurabi wrote his laws on a pillar in the center of town. We can't even find a list of ours in plain English. No one knows what all the laws are, and no one can be held morally responsible for violating them. Until the system changes drastically, ignorance is indeed an excuse.
I happen to know the legal expert on weapons in my state. He is a very successful lawyer who specializes in cases of concealed weapons and weapons violations. I asked him one day if it was legal to carry a pocket knife, and if so, how large. His answer, "No one knows." There are three contradictory laws listing legal blade lengths and one that specifically guarantees everyone the right to carry a hunting knife without specifying what that is. Other laws say that you can carry a blade so long as it is hidden, not hidden, shorter than a given length, or not for malicious purposes. His legal advice was that it is fine to carry a knife, but to be safe you should carry one shorter than 2.75 inches and keep it concealed. That violates two laws, but is in accordance with three. If it ever goes to court he claims that he will not have any problem showing that the laws contradict, and thus can't be enforced, which he has done in the past.
And that is a perfect example of why laws or more or less arbitrary and not worth looking up for a layman.
You have that backwards. China could stifle our economy by cutting back on exports. Sure, they'd suffer too but they could always offload more products to other countries to make up for most of it.
Think about what would happen if China cut imports to our country. Vastly fewer shoes, cooking items, clothes in general, most products at Wal Mart/Kmart/Boscovs/etc, toasters, coffee machines, etc.
Think of all the people who would suddently be out of a job. And I don't mean just the folks at Wal Mart. Think of the shipping companies, distributors and everyone else involved in the supply chain. Think of stores with mostly empty shelves.
Next time you go shopping for something take a look at how many products are made in China. It was nearly impossible for me to find a set of measuring spoons which weren't made in China. It was by pure luck that I found a set at a Black and Decker outlet store. Which was kind of funny seeing how many of their products were made in China.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Without disagreeing on your (implied) assertion that it's false: given that meanwhile we're talking about the possibility of people going away for long times for "IP" infractions, I sure wouldn't be surprised by people going to jail for, well, just about anything, cussing included.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Honestly, you'd think that no one reading this thread has every had someone steal the work or something. The whole point is that, to Chinese industry (and Korea, too), every bit of hard intellectual work that the the western world does is simply considered free for the taking. They are building their economy on theft, and figuring that they can build up a culture of actual innovation some other day when they no longer have people smarter than them to steal from. The message from our government isn't "put people in jail" for the fun of it, or because we like having people in jail, but "convey to your citizens that stealing is stealing, or start to lose what you're completely dependent upon: easy trade with the western hemisphere."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Damn right, he should get the rest of his life in prison. He obviously cannot function in civilized society.
Frankly, in my opinion, he should just be taken out and shot, like a feral dog.
Proverbs 21:19
Good quote from Ayn Rand, I don't agree with it entirely but she certainly has accurately characterized today's legal/political system fairly well.
How did you get from that to The most useful kinds of rules are the ones that everyone violates, and that are therefore unworkable. How does this make them useful? It seems to make them excess burdens. And if anything, just because everyone exceeds the speed limit, doesn't mean I'm exempt from punishment.
The real question here is what does Rand mean by "innocent"? Is there some objective standard for innocence, some way to compare, and if there isn't then you either have anarchy or require some rules to operate and define what normative "innocence" is.
Atlas Shrugged is a good read though and I applaud you for dropping some philosophy into the mix.
In compliance with the new American pushed IP laws, China has executed it's first batch of copyright infringers. The trials were short and to the point as the defendants could not afford proper IP lawyers. The RIAA and MPAA were quoted saying, "We are ecstatic that the new laws are working so effectively."
US officials had no official comment but say they are considering similar legislation admid inquiry from concerned citizens in both Hollywood and on Wall St.
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