Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
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 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/
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.