Slashdot Mirror
Stiffer Penalties for Copyright Violations
smallfries writes "US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has proposed much harsher punishments for copyright violations, including jail time. The Intellectual Property Protection Act [PDF Warning] doesn't appear to change the fundamentals of US copyright law but does allow more leeway for the police when investigating suspected crimes, and harsher punishments for those convicted. A response with a link to one site's look at the bill is up on Linux Electrons. Now that attempting the crime has such severe consequences, who will be the first to go to jail for running a p2p client?"
. . . the Attorney General has time for the arduous task of protecting the intellectual "property" of their corporate masters^W^W citizens.
... as a matter of principle, that any time the government wishes to criminalize what was previously a civil offense, it should have to demonstrate an overriding interest in doing so. I mean, this goes way beyond IP law. Basically what they're saying is, "Anything you can get sued for, we can also put you in jail for." They're erasing the line between civil and criminal law. Where the hell does this end?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
But why would I buy legal CD's when you have people like Sony installing illegal software on computers?
The spyware that Sony installs on the computers of music fans does not even seem to be correct in terms of copyright law.
t icle&sid=215.
w topic=38700
It turns out that the rootkit contains pieces of code that are identical to LAME, an open source mp3-encoder, and thereby breach the license
http://dewinter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=ar
Sony rootkit violating GPL?, Seems to include parts of LAME?
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?sho
Maybe Sony will get what it deseves then.
Is there any hard, researched, evidence that harder punishments decrease rate of whatever they're punishing?
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
Not abusing Slashdot as an advertising medium for the band you worked for is appreciated, but I, for one, would like to know which band this is, so that if they're any good, I can support them (compared to the normal record labels, from which I simply don't buy music at all).
:) )
(On a side note, Slashdot made me type in "condom" as the captcha for this post. Hee hee
The financial penalties already are, as they can sue you for downloading a copy, but I'm relatively sure they haven't sued anyone for stealing a cd.
- My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
who will be the first to go to jail for running a p2p client?
I hope it will be US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's daughter. THAT would be real fun.
I want to know why this HASN'T happened yet! In Sept 2003 when the RIAA started sueing people, they were immediately lambasted by the press for the people they sued...grandmonthers running Macs and 12-year-olds in the projects.
Since then, despite the thousands of people they've sued, they haven't sued someone able to make a major stink by who they are. I always assumed the RIAA were carefully screening out VIPs from their suit list.
But then in Dec 2004 Verizon won a court ruling against the RIAA that essentially said that the RIAA could not know whom they were suing...they had to make 'John Doe' lawsuits, only after sueing could they find out the identities of their victims.
I assumed that after that that they could not filter 'unsuable' people off their list. Yet no one prominent has gotten sued and told the press. So what happened? Or will it happen RSN?
Practice Kind Randomness and Beautiful Acts of Nonsense.
That's my point. Creating popular art is hard. The artist deserves to decide how to be compensated.
No. It is not hard. At least not in the way you imply. Artists (true artists, not product placement fabrications) create because they are driven to by whatever force it is that gives most of us some small measure of creativity and a select few an over-abundance. I'm nothing saying that its effortless, but they certainly don't view it as work . The artist is compelled to create, it is his or her raison d'être, and they will do so whether they are wealthy beyond measure or indigent and incarcerated. The original idea behind copyright was that society could both show appreciation and help enable those who are so fortunate (or mis-fortunate, depending on your perspective) by protecting them from being taken advantage of. In doing so, a society recognizes that there is intrinsic value in art which a mere pricetag can never match; and that is what fosters creativity.
The modern thought process which so easily equates creation with a monetary value is a nightmarish twisted version of this intention, and does far more to damage the arts than any lack-of-copyright ever could. It is the ultimate devaluation.
I had exactly the same thought as the parent post -- the day is fast arriving when even possessing non-redistributable content is too risky.
I can see this being extended to a form of unreasonable search and seizure: Wandering the net, you find yourself on a filesharing site. You nose around a bit, then leave without downloading anything. A week later, the copyright nazis arrive at your door (armed with a warrant) and inform you that since your IP address was seen on a P2P site, you are automatically a suspect. They arrest you, confiscate your computer, and march the lot off to detention. Now it's up to you to prove your innocence.
But... you've got a few ripped MP3s on your computer, from a CD you legally "own" (well, that you licensed from the record label) which in itself goes to show intent to distribute, as does possession of the tools to rip said MP3s.
Now you're in REAL shit.
Oh, and if you're a resident of a country where the DRM laws prohibit even discussing circumvention (frex, Finland if a current bill passes) you can't complain to anyone about this treatment, not even your lawyer.
Yeah, right now this scenario seems an hallucination induced by a too-snug tinfoil hat. But it's certainly the direction things are headed.
And given all that, out of sheer self-preservation it would behoove folk to buy ONLY those materials produced by bands and studios that specifically ALLOW free redistribution of ripped copies. (Or cloned copies if the artist so allows.)
Note that I specified "ripped copies" and "free redistribution", NOT unauthorized hardcopies (ie. counterfeits intended for sale without payment to the artist), and NOT pay-to-download without paying the artists (PTD with micropayments to the artist should naturally be encouraged). Those activities should indeed be prosecuted, as they would be for any other counterfeit goods.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
At the very least, it makes putting a copyright file on a network riskier, even if you have no intention of letting anyone else know about it. An easy and common example would be sharing music with yourself by sftp. They could claim it's an attempt to share with others.
The real endgame is to make the internet look like broadcast TV. Only a few will have the power to share anything. Running a server is already forbidden by your ISP, despite the fact that many commercial applications do just that and would not work otherwise. The big publishers are closer to getting their way every day and it makes me sick. So much for free press in this country.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well, if all the Slashdotters out there would simply send me ten dollars each, I would be happy to buy the Congressman of your choice. Minus a small handling charge, of course.
What would happen if each of us made a personal contribution to our elected representatives, along with a letter explaining that if they vote intelligently on certain important issues, there will be more where that came from. Maybe if four or five hundred thousand technjocks start putting their money where their mouth is, we could eliminate the entertainment industry influence entirely. Sure, I know about campaign finance laws, but if a given representative or senator got all he could legally receive directly from his constituents before the first RIAA lobbyist showed up at his door, it would go a long way to restoring a little balance.
And even if he has to give it back, the sight of a half-million small white envelopes, each containing ten or twenty dollars of actual cash might make him think a little. I mean things such as logic, reason, "doing the right thing", Truth, Justice and/or the American Way just doesn't seem to be enough anymore. So maybe we need to provide a little incentive.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Exactly so.
Here's an example from my own life: a few years ago I tripped over an artist on the old mp3.com, liked the first download, pulled a few more MP3s, liked those even better, so I downloaded the entire set.
Since then I've been in contact with the artist, and he's even emailed me one of his new MP3s.
Now he's got a CD for sale on cdbaby.com, and even tho it's priced at the high end ($17) and doesn't include most of my favourites, I'm going to buy a copy, because not only do I like his music, he's earned it by his own generosity toward his fans.
And I know exactly what I'm getting. I've already heard every song on the CD, as many times as I wanted. What the labels don't seem to realise (tho they should, given that radio play requests are tracked!) is that familiarity and addiction lead to sales, especially if we can gratify the whim while the urge is at its peak.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
...is that they'd rather be tough than effective. It has been demonstrated time and time again that addressing the root causes of crime leads to a far greater reduction than spending the same amount of money on law enforcement alone. But that means some form of social spending, and we can't have that, can we?
It's that simple.
Or we could just wait for them to continue to terrorize and ruin the lives of us and our children over a so-called money issues.
The leaders behind these fiasco-crimes, whether they be high government officials, or the homosexual leaders of the Riaa's, have proven themselve to be a detriment to society, who need to be shown 'justice', via any means possible.
You can do your part by documenting the Riaa, the Ceo's of the recording label industry and Felons like our current Attorney General, so that when justice is finally given to these criminals, the evidence will show how once again 'THE PEOPLE' have decided their future, instead of a hand full of Jewish-Mafia members.
--SlashDots Moderation System is NOT broke. It is 'FIXED'.
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
The problem with this is that it would lead to many more cases of the jury judging the victim, rather than the defendant or the law. We've had this happen before, such as when white juries would acquit white people accused of crimes against black people in the South, because the victim was black.
The solution to that would be to find less baised jurors, not to deny jury nullification. Besides it goes both ways, without jurry nullification, jurors may be compelled to uphold and enforce racist laws. One of the reasons why they stopped telling jurors of jury nullification was that too many people were refusing to convict runnaway slaves.
Do you all realize this act would make research into copyright protections and testing of them illegal as this might involve breaking them. It would make removing the rootkit even more illegal than it is now. I would make attempting to drag and drop a music file into your IPod in some cases a criminal act. It is simply insane.
The companies and political figure behind this just want money and power with no care to the human consequences of their actions because they are immoral. When are the people who support these Neo Fascists going to start realizing they are being used and treated like slaves? They do not care about the average conservative's agenda they simply want to use these persons' fears and desires to fuel their own dark political passions. They want money, power, and most of all control and anyone that will provide any part of that is all they care about. How many poor conservatives and liberals alike will suffer because of these horrid laws? How man innovators will be squashed? How many children will go to jail? These are the royalty of the past who have learned a new way to gain and hold on to power. What makes it worse is that people hand control to them because they spot the right message and give little tidbits to the terrified masses, while taking so much more. America wake up you are being made into slaves to a dark force worst than any you might imagine.
Well I'm one of those "strawmen" I guess, but I still see no weight in the original poster's argument. Why should I have to create popular works to have a valid position against copyright? Part of the reason I don't spend countless hours creating a tomb of words is because I don't believe in copyright protection. Even if I did create something of worth, I could not sleep well at night if I made my living off of royalties.
The original poster is trying to twist this debate around into a false dichotomy between forcing authors to collect royalties against their will, and allowing them to do so if they choose. The third and correct choice is to eliminate copyright.
Why would I be against copyright (and patents)? There are many reasons, I'll name a few. It goes against the spirit of capitalism, allowing corporations to put barriers around competition. It inflates the value of items beyond what they need be. It's unnecessary. If copyright ceased to exist society would still function just fine. The artists are already getting screwed. Most artists chase dreams of becoming rich, but very few even make enough to live off of. For the vast majority of artists, then, nothing would change. As someone else pointed out in this thread, there is a surfeit of works being created.
To me, this speaks to a much bigger problem than so-called "intellectual property" (quoted because I agree with Stallman that the term is absolute propoganda BS).
Recently, Denver became the first city to pass legislation that totally legalizes the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana by adults 21 years and older. This happened because anti-WoD organizations got the bill up for public consideration, and finally, the citizens voted in favor of it.
Of course, possession is still illegal in the state, and also on the federal law, so it's still not really 'legal'. What bothered me so much about the news is the psychotic response from the government, saying "We will still jail you under state law!" in a very draconian tone.
The big point here is that this is supposed to be a government by the people, for the people.
The people have fucking spoken, and you've openly told them that you're going to ignore their will?
Anyone have any statistics on this so-called P2P epedemic? It seems to me that with the excessively large number of Americans (hell, people WORLD WIDE) that actively participate in P2P, it's the system of content distribution that needs to change -- not the further criminalization of the practice!
1. Copyright infringement == terroist support
2. Jail time for copyright infringement
3. Enemy combatants (terroists) == no due process
4. Torture == Ok for terroists
Obviously, the next steps are:
5. ?? == Torture copyright infringers
6. Profit!
You all are misunderstanding the Republicans. The goal is not to discourage copying and file sharing. The goal is to find a new way to put millions of young people in prison. Private prisons are big business in the USA and the private prison companies like Correction Corporation of America and Wackenhut are big campaign contributors to Republicans. They get $30,000 per year from the government for every person that they hold in their private prisons. More prisoners means more profits for them, so they strongly encourage the criminalization of activities that are currently not considered by any civilized people to be incarceration crimes.
Rest assured that if this law permitting wholesale incarceration for copyright actually goes into effect that it won't be rich white boys going to jail for downloading music that is made by poor blacks yelling about how they are going to kill some other poor black guy for wearing the wrong color sneakers. Hell, this is America that we're talking about. The people who are going to jail for downloading files are black people who download copies of Dr. Martin Luther King's copyrighted speeches. Don't have any illusions about what this law is actually about.
Basically this a new form of American slave trading. Or maybe it's not so new, just the same old slave trading in a different form. Let's see, we got rich white people hiding behind 'corporate person-hood' status making $30000 a year for each person (mostly black in the USA) that is held in bondage for non-crimes like getting high instead of getting drunk. This is already responsible for over half of the people being held in slavery in American corporate prisons. Now they've come up with a new idea to put millions of more people into slavery for nothing.
Remember, this has nothing to do with copyright. Copyright is just an excuse this time to vastly increase the American slave trade. Copyright is the excuse this time just like drugs was the excuse last time. So what's it going to be next time?