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Congress Declares War on File Leakers
An anonymous reader submits "Bush is expected to sign a law that essentially makes it a crime punishable by up to three years in jail for a user to put a single 'copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released.' Whichever side you're on in the copyright debate, you have to agree this legislation is draconian and excessive, to say the least."
Just when we think it can't get any worse, we see this sort of crap:
From the article:
Nice. Our President lies to us about weapons of mass destruction and drags us into an unjust war that has cost thousands of Americn lives, but I'm the felon.
And look how they got this thing passed...it rode in on the coattails of this:
Also from the article:
Honestly, why are we stealing this crap anymore? Especially as the three most popular movies currently are Hitch, The Pacifer, and Be Cool (thanks to www.the-numbers.com)? Why do we waste our time and endanger our freedom?
Well, I say, it's time to stop. Not just stop pirating mainstream movies, but stop watching them altogether. There's plenty of content to be found out there on the Web (AtomFilms and INetFilm come to mind).
Show the RIAA that we are not sheep. Show them that we don't need to see the latest Keanu Reeves travesty. Show them we're tired of their shit. Don't see their movies. Don't pirate their movies. Don't have anything to do with their movies. If enough of us shake off the yoke, it will make a difference.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
...how the countless "shared folders" containing "prerelase copyrighted works" on untold numbers of compromised Windows boxes on university campuses will be handled...
We get semi-automated C&D orders from content owners routinely as it is; will they now begin to insist on the involvement of university police or other agencies?
Yeah, there are computer security issues to work out, but on a fundamentally open public research campus with tens of thousands of computers, not all of them will be perfectly protected.
"Family Entertainment and Copyright Act."
Just write a bill, put 'family' in the title, and it's sure to pass.
With $ like this running our Whitehouse, Senate, etc. no one should be suprised. This is purchased legislation much like what is done in some third world countries. Freedom isn't free - it requires a large donation.
"Powers. I have them."
Additionally, keep in mind it's a 3 year maximum penalty. As most crimes go, prosecutors will often push for the maximum and then accept far less in a plea bargain.
A good example is possession of a concealed weapon. In Wisconsin it's illegal to do so, but a man recently used a concealed weapon to protect himself from some guys trying to rob him. Although he was breaking the law, the district attorney didn't even press charges. Based on the law he COULD have gotten prison time, but it was never even considered.
The maximum penalty for any law exists for the most extreme violators of that particular law. Just like the death penalty, it's not applied to every situation, just the extreme cases.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Am glad that 14 year old pimple faced - living in the basement - testosterone pumped teenagers are finally owning up to their evil rebellion against the all encompassing entity which is the Movie Industry. Because they clearly have struck a significant blow AND crippled the dying movie industry by rapidly proliferating Gigabytes of digital movie files costing the Producers millions in revenue that they otherwise would have gotten for the spectacular blockbuster family entertainment movies that they consistently bring to the Silver screen. And I sure dont shed a tear for my evil brethren who run the risk of starving every Movie Industry bigwig's ivy league sons and daughters, with blatant disregard for their needs to live better than us souls.
Whats even more Phenomenal is the ability of Family and Faith based groups who rightly believe that they have a god given right to eliminate filth from the minds of us and to drive our youth to the purest form of abstinence and away from depravity. And their inability to comprehend the meaning of an "Off" switch.
Heres a thought. If buying a DVD does not necessarily provide me with the fair use rights to strip out its content and modify/store it to my needs, how does that provide Clearplay with the right to filter out what they deem filthy?
And did anyone notice the name of the Bill - Family Entertainment and Copyright. with names like that, who would want to not pass it.. Save the KIDS!!
And then MPAA had to go out and sneak this one in, like both parties are always notorious for. Sneak something in which would not have stood alone in its own right. Sneak it in and drive it in before we have a chance to respond..
The whole damn K Street is the first one that needs to be cleansed.
Rapid Nirvana
How do you get to "one" ticket? Take Mac OSX as an example: How many 1000's of copies were downloaded? As a downloader, the cost of the crime is $8. But as the poster, the cost is far, far, more than that.
The term is a "maximum" not an absolute. You need something sufficiently severe to nail repeat offenders. The current approach of just saying that "If you do that, we will be angry. Very, very angry" is simply not effective in deterring this crime.
"The bill's supporters in Congress won passage of the prison terms by gluing them to an unrelated proposal to legalize technologies that delete offensive content from a film."
Someone should pass a bill that makes this sort of act illegal. That Simpsons episode where they go to Washington comes to mind. Behold the paper clip!
There is a difference between "leaving your door open" which results in someone stealing your copy of Half Life 2 and putting a CD duplicator in your room and allowing everyone in the world the ability to go into your room and copy it.
Yes...we must put the fileswappers and spammers in jail for eternity, but we can let out the sex offenders and murderers out early because of jail overcrowding. Considering two highly publicized killings happened by registered sex offenders in Florida recently, I think putting more people in jail for stupid stuff like this is a great idea!
The article state 'a single copy' The penalties apply if one copy is shared once. That's how it is written. There is no scale on the penalties, it's up to the judge, and we read everyday how that turns out once one of them gets their underwear in a wad. Sure you can exceed that, but in your example you will stand trial for 1000 counts of the same crime. Yes, the bill is written that way. So you could potentially spend 3000 years in jail under your scenario. Think about it.
I'm sorry but I really feel that Congress should be spending time protecting flesh and blood people rather than paper created "persons".
Plenty of flesh and blood people are getting fucked over by many other issues and losing a lot more money than if a company loses some possible revenue from a movie released ahead of time.
When my insurance rates go down and my prescription medicines no longer cost as much as they do then I feel Congress is free to explore some other avenues.
I pay their salary too.
I see 2 major problems with this law.
But this law is not going after someone just sharing. It seems to be going after those who share a movie, before it is released to the theaters.
Still, I wonder if this law is excessive. I would not be as troubled if I did not believe this law was passed for lobbyists, not for the public benifit. The only way to stop laws like this is for massive capmaign finance reform. Until then, groups like the RIAA will own members of Congress.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
I'm not convinced that it's excessive.
Comparison to other laws and punishments is not helpful. The legal system isn't coherent and just because a punishment is out of line with other punishments doesn't make this one excessive; it could just as easily be that some others are too lenient. You can easily find other even more egregious examples, especially in the case of drug laws. (Some terribly high percentage of prisoners is in for simple marijuana possession if urban legend is to be believed.)
Part of the reason is that punishment serves many different purposes: rehabilitation, restitution, vengeance, deterrence. Any punishment is a mixture, depending on what they want to accomplish. Deterrence is particularly strong in this case: they're going to able to track down very few offenders, so they "amortize" the punitive aspect to try to scare others off.
There's also the notion that the punishment should fit the damage done. Arguably, the damage done by sharing movies and CDs is very high. If 1% of the people who downloaded a movie would have bought it, that can easily be 10,000 people. If the studio nets ten bucks on each sale, that's $100,000 in damage. (I don't care if you wish to call the crime "infringement" or "theft" or "piracy"; I'm trying to figure out economic losses. And unless you have some hard numbers for your argument that the studios are benefitting from your free advertising, please start a different thread.)
Such a crime would be "grand theft" if it were theft, and three years is not an unusual punishment for the crime of grand theft. As I said, it may not be classified as theft, but it's a case where damage is arguably done, and done to the tune of a whole bunch of money.
As the title suggests, I'm just playing devil's advoctate here. The criminals at Enron will get only slightly more jail time for the far greater, far more concrete damage they did. Compared to that tracking down file sharers is an immense waste of time, money, and jail space. I'm just not a fan of the common Slashdot "if it's not nailed down it's mine, and if I can break the copy protection it's not nailed down" argument, and we'll see how many of those respond before I get modded to negative infinity.
This just shows how powerful corporations have become. Somehow the governemnt can justify throwing a file sharer in jail for three years because they might have cut into some corporations profits while crooked CEOs who steal millions and destroy the life and livelihood of thousands walk free or with a slap on the wrist. Every day the class divisions are becoming more apparent in this country.
Time makes more converts than reason
Alternately, you could argue that since the work isn't available for sale at all, you aren't costing them a dime.
This could also completely stifle online trading of bootlegs (I'm referring to fan-made live concert recordings). Since most of these are never released (if they're recorded in the first place), almost any bootleg would be a "prerelease." The label could theoretically sue someone for distributing a bootleg, seize the copy (and rights to it) in lieu of that $250,000 fine, and sell the work at a profit while the fan sits in jail.
Or consider this: If I download a TV show which is only broadcast overseas (or broadcast overseas before broadcast locally) with BitTorrent, I'm also guilty according to this law. Even though the show would be broadcast for free if/when it does come to my area.
Yes, this seems draconian and excessive to me.
Prereleases are the free market at work- if there's demand, a supply will appear. The movie studios and record labels work up a huge public demand for their works, then act all surprised when an illicit supply appears.
From the article:
If signed into law, as expected, the bill would significantly lower the bar for online copyright prosecutions. Current law sanctions criminal penalties of up to three years in prison for "the reproduction or distribution of 10 or more copies or phonorecords of one or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of $2,500 or more."
Isn't it enough for the xxAA to be able to use an argument similar to "it caused us more than $2,500 in damages" in order to levy the heavier penalties on people they want to prosecute? I wouldn't think that $2,500 in damages would be all that hard to prove for a leaked pre-release film or CD...
It seems to me that all this bill does is lower the bar on what is considered a felony for distribution (which was formerly 10 copies or $2,500 in worth).
So this just makes it WAY easier for the xxAA industries to go after people, as their burden of proof is just about nonexistant. All they have to prove to prosecute someone successfully now is that the media in question was in fact "pre-release". They don't even have to prove that is was actually ever downloaded...
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
BTW, if you are convicted of a Felony, you forfit your right to vote. Gee, how fitting.
Makes it really easy to get rid of voting by making everyone a felon. Like voting matters, anyway.
No, I'm not a lawyer. I haven't read the legislation either. However, there is certainly room for the grandparent post's concern to be valid.
Going back to Futurama. Suppose Fox (or whomever owns it now) decided that they would put Futurama out for download six months after it was shown on TV. (The Sci-Fi network did put Battlestar Galactica's first episode online, after all. It's not a total stretch.) But somebody watched it on TV, and saved it to their computer, and put that on the Internet. If the product is `Futurama for download', then the person just made it available before release. It really depends on exactly how the law is written.
Another possiblity would be if they took Futurama episodes and saved them to their computer, and then made .iso files for burning to DVD, and put those online. If they did this before the DVD was available with those episodes, it's possible they could get nailed with this new law -- again, it depends on exactly how the law is written.
And laws aren't always used to go after the people that the laws were originally written to go after. It would be extremely naive to assume that this law was somehow different.
I don't think your post was a troll. A bit shortsighted, perhaps, but not a troll. Have you considered that maybe the problem isn't with this place, but with your expectations of this place? This place attracts a certain sort of people, and often people of a certain type think similarly. I realize that you're trying to be insulting with your `groupthink mode', but in reality the moderation was probably done by a few people who honestly felt that the post was a troll (could just be one person too) rather than people who `shared a brain'."I'm sorry but I really feel that Congress should be spending time protecting flesh and blood people rather than paper created "persons"."
I respectfully disagree. Congress should be spending its time boning up on new weapons, threats to the world, trade issues, technologies, and generally just learning what's going on around them.
There is a sense that I've gotten from a great deal of feedback like yours in the last 5-10 years, that Congress should be doing different things, but can you imagine how much better off as a nation we (sorry, intl. readers) would be if congress would just do fewer, more informed things?
United States law recognizes no universal right to limit the distribution of information. (Rights like "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", or those enumerated in the Bill of Rights; though it's important to note that when the constitution was framed, many opposed specifically enumerating any rights in the Bill of Rights because it was considered that everybody naturally had the right to do ANYTHING unless specifically disallowed, and enumerating them could lead people to limit themselves to JUST those rights).
Despite its poor name, "copyright" laws grant a limited exclusive PRIVILEGE to copy information. In other words, they are restricting the natural way of things in hopes of achieving some greater good. (Anyone can copy anything, naturally, as per the assumed right to do whatever you like unless otherwise limited; copyright law is the limit, not the right).
Infringing on copyright law is *not theft*. You have not deprived the original owner of any property, and thus have violated no property rights. You have infringed on a law, sure, but that law is not based on any universal right.
Given that, you're right that there's no right to cheap drugs or insurance either. Which just puts these two issues on the same footing: trying to regulate a naturally unregulated system in order to achieve some greater good. No natural rights violations are being violated in either case.
I believe the GP poster was merely expressing his disdain that things are being regulated in favor of the corporations, instead of in favor of the people.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Actually, it's quite apt. It's not private property rights we're talking about here. It's copyright. Copyright exists for a reason in the constitution.
So the Constitution says "yes, Congress is allowed to give authors exclusivity to their original works for a limited time, and allow them to control who has access to it, to promote the progress of science and useful arts."
How, precisely, is it "promoting the progress of science and useful arts" to have copyright extended indefinitely? Note also that it says "authors" - not "decendants of authors" or "corporations of which the author is affiliated."
The Constitution spells out very clearly that the reason for copyright is to promote science and the arts.
Do I have a right to copyrighted works? Yes, once protecting them has stopped advancing arts and science, they should no longer fall under Congress's ability to legislate. And if someone can explain to me how protecting "Steamboat Willie" advances the arts, I'd love to hear it. It advances Disney's economic interests, but it surely diminishes the artistic community as a whole to have everything slowly fall under perpetual copyright.
So yes, too much protection is being given to pieces of paper - copyrighted works. They're supposed to fall into the public domain. I have a right to use those works once they've stopped "promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts", and that right is being slowly eroded.
The medicine argument would be even more apt if we were talking about patents, but we're not, so I won't go there.
Up to 10 years in prison for copyright infringment but only 2 years in prison for interfering with the democratic process.
That says it right there. Copyright is far more important than democracy.
Deleted
To all of you who are writing things along the lines of "it's just 3 years, doesn't seem so bad, considering the heinous crime", something to tell you:
unless you've personally done 3 years, or, in fact, any time, kindly STFU. I have not served any time, so I can not speak from experience on how bad it is. All I know are witness accounts.
After 3 years in jail, your life is over. Period. You are permanently unemployable (no one wants to hire an ex-con). You are facing a choice of flipping burgers for the rest of your life, or becoming a hard-core criminal. You can never vote again (as an ex-felon, anyone with >1 jail time). Your psyche will be permanently altered, and most likely destroyed. You will be abused by whoever happens to be bored. If you resist, you will get beaten and then abused. And by abused I mean serially raped anally and orally. All of your conceptions of decency, honesty, and goodwill of all men will get crushed. Your personality may potentially survive somewhat intact if 1) you are phenomenally, exceptionally strong inside, and 2) you don't turn into a raving maniac as a self-defense mechanism. The chances of surviving as something close to your former self - almost 0. You will leave prison a burned-out husk, a grey shadow of your former self. Don't let the kindly, heartwarming prison movies fool you. You will turn into the most dreaded image of yourself, a living, breathing zombie that's totally dead inside. That's the good case. The bad case is you'll become a hardened criminal with no regard for human life, and will spend the rest of your pathetic existence taking advantage of normal people as a means of psychological revenge.
I base my comments on descriptions of prison life both in the US and the former USSR, as written by inmates who have survived.
So, this debate is essentially the following: is sharing a movie worth destroying a person's life? It is contended that their actions result in financial loss for some company. The exact amount, or even the fact of loss is *highly* questionable, and is disputed. Is the action of sharing a movie sufficiently grave that we see it fit to strip the offender of their humanity as punishment? What this law contends is that someone who infringes on a copyright has rejected the social contract to the same extent as, say, a rapist, a child molesterer or a murderer. 3 or 10 isn't relevant, guys. The person's just as dead either way. Longer sentences are a means of 1) isolation, or 2) giving the inmate more of a chance to become a hardened criminal. So the question stands: is the loss of corporate profit a grave enough offence to remove someone's humanity?
The answer is left as an exercise for the reader.
Basically, unlike proprietorships or partnerships in which liability of the firm is distributed to its owners, a corporation has its own legal identity separate from the people who own shares of its stock; if a corporation suffers losses, it has to pay debts, not its owners. By doing this, stockholder liability is only limited to what they've invested in the firm (not their entire fortune) whereas proprietorships and partnerships can potentially have unlimited liabilities (someone makes a big mistake) meaning that entire fortunes can be collected to pay debts.
The catch is that corporations, existing as a legal identity are taxed whereas proprietorships and partnerships are not... This means that owners are taxed on corporate income in addition to the corporation being taxed on the same income (or double taxation).
So this is the extent to which a corporation is considered a person... it's purely financial. So how exactly does a purely financial construct resemble a psychopath? I mean, if you're embracing an abstraction of that degree, why not extend the argument to basically anything centered around a theoretical basis? I'm curious, what would be the psychological evaluation of the /. copyright opposition crowd (considering that it seems to oppose the RIAA/MPAA, but supports copyright enforcement concerning GNU efforts)?
Go ahead and call me a capitalist, republican, conservative, bible-thumping pig as that seems to be the common response here (to opposing opinions of open minds of course).
Note: I did not make any statements in the hopes of diminishing open source efforts (as I would be quite the hypocrite considering I made this post using Linux and Mozilla). I just get tired of the whole faceless corporations are evil and that's that argument. Corporations have problems (such as the issue of corporate governance) but absurd comparisons to psychopaths have got to go.
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
We must fight this by playing their own game. If anyone knows a congress-person's kid who uses p2p to share copywritten files, the time has come to turn them in. Only when the government class has their own going away for three years per offense will they understand how pathetic this legislation is.