Jail Time For P2P Developers?

Kjella writes "A Califorian bill introduced last week would, if passed, expose file-swapping software developers to fines of up to $2,500 per charge, or a year in jail, if they don't take 'reasonable care' to prevent their software from being used to commit crime. C|Net has the story, as well as a link to the actual bill. By the overly broad definition of P2P software, almost any piece of internet software could be liable. This browser is certainly able to download and upload files ('Save as ...' and upload forms). Are Microsoft, Opera and Mozilla.org taking 'reasonable care' to prevent me from exchanging anything illegal? Of course, I never go there, but a friend of my uncle's third cousin's brother told me warez download sites work just fine ..."

Comments

Copyleft Illegal?

[DenDave]

(e) As used in this section,"commercial recording or audiovisual
work" means a recording or audiovisual work whose copyright owner, or
assignee, authorized agent, or licensee, has made or intends to make
available for sale, rental, or for performance or exhibition to the
public under license, but does not include an excerpt consisting of
less than substantially all of a recording or audiovisual work. A
recording or audiovisual work may be commercial regardless of whether
the person who electronically disseminates it seeks commercial
advantage or private financial gain from that dissemination.

And hence no more copyleft/creative commons in california..

Oh, and that just made Magnatune.com illegal for californians as well... (or is it californianasswell)

Re:Copyleft Illegal?

[_undan]

Not quite. That doesn't mention anything about the copyright owner, only the person who distributes the work. The gist of it is that the work may fall under the "commercial" category, even if the person distributing it isn't doing it for any personal financial gain.

For someone to be sued, there still has to be an original copyright owner to file an actual claim; Copyleft and Creative Commons are still safe.

Re:Representatives of the People, Indeed

[Riddlefox]

The P2P developers need gun lobbyists on their side! Since when was a gun developed that took "reasonable care" in preventing accidental death? The gun should be able to detect human presence and not fire a round! Yeah, it might cost a lot of money and time to develop that feature but we have to make sure that people don't use it the wrong way!

Are you being serious or humorous? Virtually every single gun has at least one safety on it to prevent accidental discharges. These include drop safeties to prevent the hammer from falling if the gun is dropped, a manual safety to lock the hammer/sear in the cocked position and prevent the trigger from being pulled, grip safeties to ensure that the trigger can only be pulled if the pistol is being held properly, trigger safeties (such as on Glocks) to ensure that the trigger can only be pulled if the entire trigger face is pressed, and not just snagged, loaded chamber indicators, disconnectors to keep the firearm from going full-auto, and so on and so on. Multiple mechanical devices have to fail for a firearm to accidentally fire.

Note that there is a fine distinction between Accidental Discharges and Negligent Discharges. Accidental Discharges occur when the mechanical devices do fail, and the firearm fires when no shot was intended. Some SKS's were notorious for inadvertantly going full-auto when the sear catch failed, and the rifle slam-fired. Negligent Discharges occurs when a person violates a basic rule of firearm handling, and fires a shot when s/he did not intend to. 99.9% of the time, this is what happened when "the gun just went off!" - the person had their finger on the trigger and pulled it when they were not paying attention.

Your invention would have to read the user's mind - what if I want to shoot that mugger coming at me with a lead pipe?

I'm not intending to start a RKBA debate here, I merely wanted to educate.

Re:Representatives of the People, Indeed

[e-gold]

Not to further-fuel the endless RKBA debate, but can anyone here imagine ANY product besides guns *not* being forced to adopt "silencers" (actually suppressors, but let's stick with the ignorant Hollyweird-terminology for now!) in the USA if invented yesterday? Instead, getting a silencer in the USA is *much* harder than getting a normal, Title one weapon, and costs $200 along with all the hassle. I can tell everyone who hasn't tried one, suppressors make shooting a LOT more-fun (and safer). And no, plinking with a suppressor didn't magically transform me into a mobster bent on murder.

Does this rarely-questioned policy reduce crime? Dubious (in Finland, you can buy suppressors in a hardware store, and I haven't heard of any crime-wave there.)! Across much of Europe it's actually illegal to shoot WITHOUT suppressors, because of all the noise guns make). Europe muddles along anyway. Does it increase government-control of law-abiding citizen-units while NOT affecting criminals (who'll by-definition break the law!)? Absolutely -- and that's the only purpose of 99.99% of gun-laws, whether or not their authors (who are normally safety-Nazis, at least when it comes to issues like industrial noise-levels being generated in more-politically-correct ways!) will ever directly admit it.

But this particular law, as populations get more-dense, also has the pernicious effect of slowly getting rid of guns & accurate shooting as a hobby due to the noise. Hiram Maxim, who invented both the machinegun and the suppressor back when the USA was a much-freeer country, would probably be mystified today at our politicians' useless anti-fun/anti-gun antics. The NRA, which is supposedly so-powerful, does NOT represent machinegun or "silencer" users because the media will beat them up as representing mobsters rather than looking at the hearing-safety issue. This is because the news media in general are ignorant, bigoted, and biased against individual firearms owners who tell it like it is (ie me). I don't blame them, since I destroy their arguments (see above) I must be unpleasant, so flame-away, leftist-ACs.

I still know I'm right.
JMR