Orrin Hatch to Lead Senate Panel on Copyright, Patents

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.'"

Comments

Copyrights and.... phishing attacks?

[blanks]

"In addition to piracy and copyright infringement, Leahy hopes to work through the committee to address the new threats of "phishing" and "pharming" -- forms of electronic fraud in which perpetrators impersonate trusted banks, retailers and financial institutions to steal Internet users' personal data, spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said."

Ok really now, why would a sub committee that is dealing with copyrights also be going after people doing phishing attacks.

Either I'm totally missing something here, or this committee has other plans that wont be seen on the surface for a while.

File Sharing personal information

[hugesmile]

Off Topic, I know, but while we're on File Sharing...

It's tax time - time to run the annual check to see who is sharing their .tax files (and "Tax Return.pdf") with the world.

Good old P2P. You think it's cute that your kid saves a few bucks by downloading music for free. Instead, you set yourself up for identity theft by publishing your complete tax return on the Intarweb.

Gnucleus (or substitute BearShare, Kazaa, or the P2P program of your choice) shows handfuls of people sharing .tax files. But don't try to be a Good Samaritan and tell them! They may shoot the messenger if you let Dad know that Daughter has opened up the confidential files to the world!

It's like telling someone that their zipper's down, and they punch you because you peeked.

for (i=1;i++;)

[tmasky]

Potential flamebait, but I'm damned curious.
Why are you Americans putting up with this crap? Governments have been violently overthrown for less than what the current administration has done.

Common answer: "Because corporations have a stranglehold on our government. It doesn't really matter who gets elected."

Yes, but you still have some kind of pseudo-democracy.

Why do I not hear of any collective group being formed to help inform Joe Public and try and rally some support? Power in numbers! Don't stand for what is currently being dished out to you. It's insulting.

Hell. There's at least a couple of hundred thousand Americans who read slashdot every day. There's a start.

And I'm not talking about something which just called for a change in administration.. like moveon.org

Re:for (i=1;i++;)

[Joey7F]

Yes, but you still have some kind of pseudo-democracy.

Yeah we call it a republic though.

Why do I not hear of any collective group being formed to help inform Joe Public and try and rally some support? Power in numbers! Don't stand for what is currently being dished out to you. It's insulting.

An issue like copyright laws are not going to be at the top of anyone's agenda. Plus, it is somewhat complicated, everytime I explain stuff to my friends they zone out. I chalk it up to me being a boring guy, but I also blame it on the fact that people just don't care.

I will also assume you are European, in which case I should ask you why Europeans aren't jumping up and down to lower taxes and remove bans on certain speech (such as the ban on Nazi material). Because people in Europe don't care. There is no burning desire to draw up swastikas, nor is there a really yearning to remove government from your lives. You all are happy, much like we are.

Hell. There's at least a couple of hundred thousand Americans who read slashdot every day. There's a start. And I'm not talking about something which just called for a change in administration.. like moveon.org

We have lots of guns in America. If 100k tried to overthrow the government against the will of the rest of the country, it would be the quickest crushing of a coup...ever! There is no need for a revolution...yet. There certainly is no need for a violent one.

--Joey

Re:for (i=1;i++;)

[roman_mir]

IANAmerican: First of all this is not the kind of issue that people go into bloody battles for, secondly, you should read some of what Lenin wrote about Stolypin reforms. Basically if people are given more opportunity for financial independence, it is [almost?] impossible to get them to participate in a revolution and overthrow the current government.

Re:for (i=1;i++;)

[hugesmile]

The only thing I have seen that is close to this is The Free State Project, where a Yale guy worked out the math that if 20,000 like-minded Americans move to a less populated state, they could form a voting block that could return Freedoms.

Get one state, then then work on the federal government. Show how one state's freedom increases the quality of life and others will follow. etc.

He's up to about 6500 people who have pledged that they will move to New Hampshire once they reach the 20,000 number. I'd love to see this succeed!

scary boss

[octalgirl]

I don't know how this guy does it, who he knows, or how he keeps managing to BS his way into all of these things. Every bill he has attempted to pass has been so infantile in tech knowledge, so utterly chilling, and yet he just manages to do it again and again. And he doesn't even bother to learn, he just twists the words until they meet his agenda. He is like some scary Dilbert boss of the entertainment world, carelessly waving his laser pointer in everyone's eye. But for as much as he screws up (in the tech view anyway) he just keeps rising to the top!

This man is just exhausting already, and I wonder if that it the point. To take all of us who battle this now and just wear us out until we give up. As the years march by, it will simply become a way of life. Isn't there a word for that?

Paying Orr$n to sing

[rmpotter]

Good old ornery Orrin. Remember when he took money from Novell, Sun, Oracle and AOL to fight Microsoft in the late 90's. Back then, many in the OSS community cheered him on for his integrity and forthrightness in taking on Microsoft. I guess cheering him on can't buy as much "integrity" as cold hard cash and the use of a corporate jet for his campaign.

Re:I think I can speak for all of us when I say...

[Anonymous Coward]

You seriously see no difference between a) a company/person taking someone else's copyrighted work (GPL'ed code et al.) with the explicit purpose of making (more) money / increasing their profit margin and b) a person downloading/sharing a copyrighted work (a movie, Windows, et al.) without any motives of making money?

Sure we can identify complementing definitions of profit (profit by obtaining access to more copyrighted works by sharing - the old "ratio ftp" strategy at work) 'til we turn blue, but c'mon for chrissakes, it's a world of difference (money = power and all that..).

Huh? Is timothy being sarcastic?

[sgant]

Looks like file sharing will finally be erased once and for all

In case people don't understand sarcasm on the net, he was being sarcastic.

I mean, let's say Hatch outlaws file sharing...even say outlawing Bittorrent and things of that nature...will that change anything? The ONLY way to totally 100% stop piracy and file sharing over the Internet is to totally turn off the Internet. That's right, turn the entire thing off.

And trust me, it's only a matter of time before some idiot gets up there and proposes that.

And they're too busy with putting 500,000 dollar fines on radio people that may say "fuck" and having hearings on Baseball. I mean, what the FUCK are these idiots doing up there in Washington? Baseball?!?! WHO THE FUCK CARES! Tax dollars at work folks.