Bill Would Criminalize Attempted IP Infringement

ianare writes "H.R. 3155, the Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal Enforcement Act of 2007, has been introduced in Congress by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH). In most cases, the bill appears to simply double existing penalties. One big change however, is that people could now be charged with criminal copyright infringement even if such infringement has not actually taken place. Not surprisingly, the EFF has condemned the legislation."

Comments

I come from the academic tradition...

[MichaelCrawford]

... where, at one time at least, discoveries were freely shared through publication in peer-reviewed journals. The way of academia was supposed to be that knowledge was free for all.

This lead to my belief that copyright should be strictly limited (in the piece I link to in the grandparent, I conclude that the original term of fourteen years would be best), and further the decision to place my music under Creative Commons.

Unfortunately, the academic world I grew up believing in no longer really exists; Universities patent their professors' inventions, and University researches do contract work for private industry under non-disclosure. It's a damn shame.

Re:I come from the academic tradition...

[kebes]

Unfortunately, the academic world I grew up believing in no longer really exists;

It still exists. Maybe it's "fighting to survive"... but it is not dead. In fact many academics are carrying-on with the tradition of working towards open sharing of information. For instance a large number of academics are actively pushing for Open Access to all scholarly content. It will no doubt be a long struggle, but progress is already being made, such as preprint archives (e.g. arXiv), a growing number of open-access journals (e.g. PLoS), and even some big-name traditional journals are now offering authors the option to pay for their articles to be open-access.

The new generation of academics have grown up with the internet and are accustomed to easy online access to every journal imaginable. As this generation takes over more academic positions, I think this intellectual freedom will spread. In short, I'm hopeful that academia will undergo a mini-renaissance and re-emphasize its roots of "spreading knowledge."

How about Attempted Political Fraud Act 2007

[syousef]

...and the standard of proof would be any politician holding or running for office.

Applies only to people (real ones) ?

[LingNoi]

... I assume this bill will only apply to people and not companies as it says..

criminalize some forms of "attempted infringement."

Say for example a company steals some GPL work they won't see any Jail time and/or penalties but a person who steals the companies work will get the full force of this bill. Not that the two are related but its the best analogy I could think of.

This will work well for many companies who favour stealing and ruining peoples lives in the name of profits and just doing my job. As usual the US government will not take a balanced view on the subject and do what their corporate masters tell them to.

For more info see today's other posting about a corrupt US official

On the other hand..

If I am wrong and I does apply to the GPL for companies this quote says..

The bill allows "a judge to dole out damages for each separate piece of a derivative work or compilation, rather than treating it as one work," wrote Derek Slater, "for example, copying an entire album could translate into damages for each individual track, even if the copyrights in those tracks aren't separately registered."

Does that mean a judge could dole out damages for each separate source code files. Say someone is infringing the Linux copyright could a judge charge them per source.c file?

Re:FP?

[jamstar7]

m concerned with what is their justification for doubling prison terms in terms of proportionality of punishment. Let punishment fit the crime, etc.

Probably just making sure of a good supply of slave labor for companies who do business inside of prisons. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/pris-m08 .shtml for starters...

It's not about *owning* information...

[Randym]

You can't own information.

While that may be true, copyright is not about *owning* information, it is about *organizing* information. Otherwise, someone would have already copyrighted the alphabet and we'd all be SOL.

Remember the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition? This is one of my Rules of Information:

"The organization of information is worth money." [I was thinking of computer programming at the time, but the concept is clearly extensible.]

[Caveat: some forms of information -- certain kinds of lists -- are *not* copyrightable: for example, the White Pages.]

People seem to think that they have a right to make money off of their ideas. And that is just absurd.

People do not make money "off of their ideas". They make money from the *implementations* of their ideas; this is, in fact, the basis of the patent system. And, no, it is not absurd, although it may seem that way to someone with no ideas.

...nobody else is obligated to ensure that their business model is profitable.

Well, I agree with you there. But if their idea is good and its implementation is adequate, people are going to *want to* give them money to possess the implementation, and, unless they are complete fups, they *can* be profitable. It's called the free market system".