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Justice Department Promises Stronger Copyright Punishments
An anonymous reader writes "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stated that the Justice department will be getting even harder on copyright infringement, targeting repeat offenders. The new 'Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007' is headed for Congress promising to 'hit criminals in their wallets' hoping to ensure that any 'ill-gotten gains' are forfeited.
No corruption to be seen here in the DOJ. Move along.
Yes, make the punishment harder, so they have a harder punishment than rapists, pedophiles, and murders? -rolleyes-
Corruption at the Justice Department. The laws are to protect the citizens. The citizens do not want strong copyright punishments. That is what the big media corporations want.
They're still up to their bullshit. There are copyright laws, there are patent laws, there are trademark laws. There is no such thing as an Intellectual Property law. That's a big blanket that the megacorps want to pull over our eyes in order to gain more power. Taken individually, copyright, patent, and trademark laws have acceptable checks and balances built into them (Except the ones that have been stroked by Mickey Mouse). But what they're after is a true Intellectual Property law that has no balancing of Megacorp vs. Common Good. They want it to be all Theirs, and no Ours.
Be careful, whenever some politician blabbers on about "Intellectual Property", it really means they are in bed with the Megacorps and want to muddy the issue in order to set some bastardized legal precedent on the sheep-like public who won't notice a thing until the water boils.
FTA:
"said he would "hit criminals in their wallets" by boosting restitution and ensuring all ill-gotten gains are forfeited, as well as any property used to commit the crimes."
So, what if no one's profiting off of the infringement?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
It is pretty much proven that he is responsible for firing several government lawyers because they pissed off Republican politicians. That is bordering on criminal. He could be impeached. He could be thrown in jail.
He has George Bush's backing but so did Rummy and then Boom he was gone.
This is the second part of the badness that comes from criminalizing copyright infringement. (The first thing was the shift of the cost of prosecution from the copyright holders to the taxpayers.)
Now that copyright infringement is criminal, politicians, attorneys and law enforcement can all cry for even more money, to be "tough on crime". Plus, since I'd guess most everyone over age ten in the US has infringed someone's copyright (downloaded something, photocopied without permission, duped a video tape, etc), it becomes yet another crime you can be charged with if someone in power decides you need to be arrested.
What we really need is copyright reform.
Soooo that means teh average person copying a movie that they have already gone to see, or a piece of software they cant afford anyway and just want to play with, wont get a fine at all since they didnt make any profit.
Cool. That is the way it should be.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In the grand scheme of things, chasing down KIDS who share mp3's just doesn't seem as important as establishing Federal guidelines for voting machines.
Law enforcement in America is not about solving real problems. We've got the world's highest per-capita prison population, and a very large percentage of those people are imprisoned for the vicious crime of -- get this -- possessing plant leaves.
From the article:
'He also said he would "hit criminals in their wallets" by boosting restitution and ensuring all ill-gotten gains are forfeited, as well as any property used to commit the crimes.'
Now... where have we heard that before? Oh yes, that sounds just like the drug laws that let police seize your house if they find you had marijuana inside it.
Does this mean your computer (and possibly your home) can be taken by government officials when you've pirated a few too many MP3s? Or written DVD-playback software for Linux?
In any case, this will give law enforcers another tool, like the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror," to make their jobs as all-encompassingly powerful and unaccountable as possible.
I've always been a supporter of two-term presidents (and their staffs):
One term in office.
One term in jail.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I wonder which definition General Gonzales is using when he states "hoping to ensure that any 'ill-gotten gains' are forfeited". Is he using the traditional definition where you pay restitution based on proven damages, or is he using the "War on Drugs" definition where all of your personal property is forfeit to the government for sharing a single MP3 file?
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
The goal was for the enrichment of society.
The idea was that the creator would have a monopoly on the creation long enough that they would be motivated to do the work.
After that the creation was turned over to society so anyone could build on it.
The original meaning changed somehow so now instead of being a temporary, governmanet-granted monopoly even the general populace thinks that it is possible to OWN an idea.
This is a recent historical event but has somehow become so pervasive that most people I talk to actually believe that the creator of a work has a moral right to control that work for the rest of time. That has never been the case and shouldn't be now.
We should fix the laws so that they enforce the original intent. Copyright and Patents should be enough motivate creators to create- not to hold society for ransom.
Can someone explain why copyrights and patents should expire? I'm being serious.
Because patents often are about physical phenomena which can't be duplicated, and because "Inventing" is in a sense not creating something which did not exist, but rather being really smart and be the first one to figure something out.
Take fire, for example. Imagine someone having a patent on using fire for cooking. That would be a rich family by now, huh? Or what if my ancestors had filed a patent on using a round device called a wheel to reduce friction.
Todays patents on compressed sound and video (aka mp3 or dvd) are more advanced, but they still deal with something which is essentially a naturally occuring phenomenon just waiting to be discovered and used.
The purpose of patents should be to reward the inventor/discovery so society can benefit from more inventions, but the reward should not be so large the inventor benefits more than society does.
Tell your friends about xenu.net
Can someone explain why copyrights and patents should expire? I'm being serious.
For the reasons they always were supposed to expire:
A. To stop hereditary dynasties founded on the work of others, as opposed to the sweat of one's brow (note that if you died back then your spouse and children kept the rewards until expiry).
B. To promote the common good and acceleration of knowledge within society - just because someone invented the fork (an American invention), that shouldn't mean someone else can't invent a fork with a mustache protector, just as someone inventing a steam radiator didn't stop my grandfather from patenting improvements on steam radiators.
C. To return the rewards of invention to society - in the old days, many patents were public patents, owned by the state, used to pay for things like roads for the citizens. Same goes for works of fiction - you only had to make sure noone wrote it in the last 17 years, but no sense for a novel not to be reprinted after a reasonable length of time.
That's just a start.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
in one corner, well-moneyed corporate interests with lawmakers and enforcers in their pockets
in the other corner, legions of poor, borderless, highly motivated, technically astute, and media loving teenagers who couldn't give one rats ass about the bloated overreaching joke that copyright law in this country has become, because it is way beyond speaking to them in the language of right and wrong
copyright law is WAY beyond protecting the artist's rights when you can't play "happy birthday" on a piano without the need to pay someone/ get permission, and mickey mouse will NEVER be in the public domain. the idea is to strike a balance between the common good and the rights of the artist. but moneyed middle men have stuck a big fat finger on that scale, and it's permanently imbalanced. in other words, copyright law is broken, corrupt, insoluble, dead
poor teenagers versus corporate interests. it's not even a blink of an eye who will obviously win: the teenagers
the future of ip law in the usa is china: lip service played to the idea at official levels, some high profile demonstration busts that don't change a thing, and rampant complete ignorance of and ignoring of ip law on the street
copyright is dead. corporations killed it by not playing fair and only looking for some more $ at the expense of our common cultural riches. you can't measure common cultural riches on the corporate ledger, so it never got a fair reckoning in the boardroom. the result: complete disconnect between law and reality
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So what? A goodly chunk of America's economy was once based on slavery - including both chattel bondage and debt bondage. Even beyond that, when the country was founded the franchise was limited to a minority of citizens.
Since they are thing we had when the country was founded, shall we roll back the laws that have corrected those abuses as well?
First, you explain why they shouldn't. Seriously, the constitution says, "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." Copyrights (and patents) are a man-made thing. Previous to copyrights, if you came up with an idea and didn't want anyone else to use it, then you wouldn't ever publish it*. However, the founding fathers knew that it would be beneficial to get people to publish their works, so as an incentive they allowed for copyrights. In essence, if you publish your material to the world, we'll pretend that you control it for a short time. That gives you the incentive of sharing your ideas, and the world is a better place for it.
Now to answer your question about why they should expire...If you are given exclusive right to your writings forever, that sure is an incentive to publish your works. However, we don't want you to just publish your ideas. We want to use them, that's what promotes progress. So we can't very well let you have exclusive rights to them forever (what use are they to you after your dead anyway?). So we set an expiration. This also gives you an incentive to create a new work. So we give you exclusive rights to your works for a long enough time for you to profit AND to publish your next work(s).
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
Hrm, not sure to write you off as a troll or respond, but ah, what the hell, I'll respond. Like many of us, I'm not anti-copyright. I firmly support the rights of an artist or inventor to control their work for a limited time in order to profit from it. (For reference, I'm both. I hold two patents, and I'm a published semi-professional photographer in my spare time.) The problem is that copyright was originally a deal struck between the general populous and the creative folk - the deal being that the creators get limited exclusivity in exchange for the eventuality that their creation will fall into public domain. This is the foundation of the US Constitution's core intellectual property provision: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
The problem is that the deal has become lop-sided. There's no way that an author's great grandchildren holding the rights to his writings up to 70 years after he died promotes the progress of science or the useful arts. That's just called greed. The author doesn't create more if he knows his distant descendants will still be extorting money for almost a century after he kicks off.
Arguably, the public domain is also vitally important to progress. Think about all the inventions that would have been lost or the massive inflation of prices (due to royalties) if patents were essentially perpetual as well. Think about historians in 100 years, trying to figure out if they can reprint a photo out of fear that someone, somewhere will show up and demand royalties because the photo was taken by their great-great-grandfather. It's already a nightmare figuring out reproduction rights.
The system is broken, and stronger penalties won't fix it. Existing punishments are adequate if enforced against the real problem - large scale commercial piracy. Sane copyright terms, in conjunction with media companies not treating customers like felons, would be a good start.
Nope no corruption here... Not until you see Copyright violators getting more jail time than murderers and rapists... oh wait I think they already do (well the rapists atleast).
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Now... where have we heard that before? Oh yes, that sounds just like the drug laws that let police seize your house if they find you had marijuana inside it.
... you exaggerate. The drug laws let police seize your house on the mere suspicion that you once had marijuana inside it.
Now, now
I'm really not sure where all the moral outrage is coming from because this is the consequence of an ownership society where privatization is blindly assumed to be, not just good, but the best thing.
This kind of posturing and eventual law enforcement activity where they'll perp-walk someone for some kind of copyright violation will get votes and most importantly raise campaign contributions.
I suspect more than a few slashdotters think that "the private sector does a better job at most things than the government.." The private sector is maximizing their revenues by enforcing its ownership rights and NOW it's a problem?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The Feds first obtained the power for asset seizures because they were going after some really evil drug lords. The American people went along with this because it was true, the Feds were definitely going after some really evil (as in kill the entire family as an example) bastards.
Then the Feds asked for more power, because they needed to get the supply chain, and grabbing a few Ferraris and yachts of really rich cocaine suppliers would help. The American people went along with this, too.
Then the Feds just assumed they had the power to grab the assets of the dealers. The American people didn't really think anything of this. After all, these drug dealers were bad people and besides, they were shooting up parts of the city in turf wars, so let the Feds grab the drug dealer BMWs with the really ugly custom wheels.
Then the Feds began seizing the assets of the drug users. Most Americans were under the impression the drug users were strung out heroine and crack junkies, so didn't give a shit. Only now Mr and Mrs Average American are learning otherwise, because their teenage son got pulled over in mom's car, and he had a joint on him, and the police are keeping the car.
I predicted this would happen at the very first stage. I was right. Even if the Feds swear up and down on a stack of bibles that they're only going to use this power on the big time commercial piracy operations, I won't believe them. Maybe today they mean it, but what about next tomorrow?
Fuck the government. They will ALWAYS abuse even the smallest amount of power. That's why we have to have the tightest possible controls on them as possible. If making it hard for them to abuse their job has the side affect of making it hard for them to do their job, so what. My rights and freedom are THAT FUCKING IMPORTANT.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Good point: Globally this may be the straw that breaks the back of the USA .... I am confident that ... others will eventually tell the USA, EU, UN, WorldBank ...
... such an ....
corporatist government strangle hold on IPR, patents
China, Russia, India
and the International Court to go fuck themselves with their dead-battery dildo.
But,it ain't like the USA has been able to figure anything out 12 months or 12
years out. Clueless courts, diplomacy, domestic policy, government
incompetent slime-ball pitiful gang of politicians have not been collected together
in one government since the Mao-China's "Cultural Revolution", Stalin's Purges,
Hitler's Perfect Aryan Religion
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
might as well make another huge swath of them criminals.
Honestly, it seems like they think of ways to make folks criminals and disenfranchise them.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I've actually never thought about it, which goes to show how indoctrinated this idea has become. It's pretty interesting actually. Imagine if all the characters that Disney creates were released into the public after 21 years. That would mean something like the Little Mermaid (1989), one of the last descent toons from that cursed studio, would almost be public domain today. Aside from all the tentacle porn past Disney characters would suddenly find themselves in, imagine the game of catch-up Disney would have to play. No longer able to simply rest on an ever engorged library of exclusive IP, they would be pushed to come up with more and more original material. All their previous stuff would be appearing in competitors' films and they'd have to actually work to maintain some sort of distinguising quality in their projects. And fuck Disney altogether, the original trilogy of Star Wars would have been completely available 3 years ago. We could have completely ignored the abortion of creativity that was Eps. 1-3. No doubt some community of people somewhere could come up with something much better independently. Public domain Jedi. I could almost run for president on the platform. Then again, it might possibly lead to a world of creative chaos with fictional universes clashing left and right. You wouldn't just be a fanboy of this or that mythology, but specifically this or that company's flavor of said mythology. No doubt the original proponents of copyright had no idea the iconic power that fictional characters would begin to take on in modern media.