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Orrin Hatch to Lead Senate Panel on Copyright, Patents

Posted by timothy on from the can-we-batten-down-the-hatches? dept.

PontifexPrimus writes "Senator Orrin Hatch, (in)famous for his idea of destroying the computers of copyright violators is to head a Senate 'panel, which will have jurisdiction over copyright, trademark and patent law, as well as treaties intended to protect American intellectual property overseas.' Looks like file sharing will finally be erased once and for all. Oh, and this looks like another field day for those who refuse to subsume patent, trademark and copyright law under the heading of 'IP law.'"

4 of 534 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This might save my family. by k8to · · Score: 4, Informative

    Wow, this troll was old in 2003.

    http://tinyurl.com/4vxlf

    --
    -josh
  2. Re:Refresh my memory, please? by hyphz · · Score: 3, Informative

    > I respect their right to choose their own
    > terms. It's a question of fair play - how
    > could I possibly demand protection for my own
    > rights, if I'm not prepared to afford that
    > same protection to others?

    The point I was trying to make is that - as far as I can tell - nobody is doubting the need for and value of copyright and other IP-related law. The problem is a) the draconion measures being employed to enforce it (eg, DMCA), and b) the corporate slant with which it is being developed and interpreted ("copy protection clubs", submarine patents, machine-gun patents, etc.).

    Hatch didn't just argue that copyright should be kept strong. He argued that the computers of people violating copyright should be destroyed. That's a whole different issue.

  3. Send a Respectful Email by geoffrobinson · · Score: 4, Informative

    Send his office some email detailing your concerns. Be respectful. Try to use facts. If enough of us did that, we might even have an impact.

    --
    Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
  4. Re:I think I can speak for all of us when I say... by masklinn · · Score: 3, Informative

    1- With your CD, you can do whatever pleases you and are not as such restricted in the destination media (for example i can use my CDs to fill my computer, my iRiver and my car sound system)
    2- You own your CD, i can lend my CDs to my friends, i can't lend my DRM-infected media files
    3- My CD has a very good quality that i can choose to use or degrade on the different medias i use my music from, whereas online music usually uses already crappy codecs (mp3, WMA) with low qualities (~128k?) and can only be degraded even more by transcoding (transcoding my WMAs to OGG gets me both OGG and WMA artifacts... yay).
    They could use lossless codecs (MonkeyAudio, FLAC, Lossless WMA, ...) but they don't...
    Result? the music i buy online is much lower quality than the one i get from CDs
    4- Downloaded files are currently as expensive as CDs versions, while you don't get the rights and you don't even get the physical media...

    Sooo, no, you don't get the same deal when you buy music online as when you buy a CD/DVD.
    as it stands atm, online mp3/WMA/whatever blows. The only advantage it has over CDs is that you don't have to wait or move your lazy ass out of your shack.
    that's all there is to it

    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler