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Congress Creates Copyright Cops
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Not satisfied with pitiful potential penalties of $150,000 for infringing upon a $0.99 song, Congress is proposing new copyright cops in the "'PRO IP' Act of 2007, specifically the creation of the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER). They also feel that the authorities need the authority to seize any computers used for infringement and to send copyright cops abroad to help other countries enforce US laws. MPAA boss Dan Glickman praised the bill saying that, 'films left costs foreign and domestic distributors, retailers and others $18 billion a year,' though Ars points out that it allegedly costs the studios only $6 billion."
I feel quite justified in saying you can take your laws and shove them up your arse.
*ahem* sorry, but the summary just forced me to say that.
liqbase
The music owns you.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Remember to write your congressmen.
Both in opposition to this bill and to state you general feelings that copyright law has become too broad and too far in favor of big media companies.
Do it now, email is good, paper is better.
That our government is owned by corporations. What a surprise.
OMG this is (*&#$% scary, the last thing we need is another above-the-law government organization. We've already seen that the CIA is now above the law with their news of destroying evidence of torture that they previously said did not exist.
The role of the government is to run the country per the will of the people who created the government, is it not? So at what point does public will tip the scales and cause these laws to become moot and oppressive? How legal is it to make a law that will actually cause the majority of law-abiding citizens to become criminals? What if more than 50% of the people illegally download music, shouldn't the law then be repealed? Whatever happened to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
With such disproportiate laws, particularly of seizure, innocent US citizens are now wide open to black-mail.
A determined enemy only has to have a few minutes access to your computer, download a few songs and then report you.
Maybe you should try to RTFA? Let me help you out:
"A bipartisan group of Congressmen (and one woman) yesterday introduced a major bill"
Show me the majority of the Republicans opposing this bill and you'll have a point. Until then, I'm going with "Congress is clueless and sucks" as a generalized statement of how I feel about this.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
What you fucking imbeciles don't realize is that the people pirating your movies WOULD NOT PAY FOR THEM OTHERWISE (mostly because they're shit, but that's really beside the point here). But no, dickbeats like Glickman parade their made up and meaningless numbers in front of the largest congregation of dickbeats on the face of the earth (hello, US Congress!), they have a big circle jerk, and come up with some abominable brainchild of a bill like this one. Sigh. If the terrorists haven't won already, they probably deserve to. They don't even have to take our freedom, we're just selling it off a piece at a time.
It's a good job I'm communist, all this file sharing and FOSS is exactly what the doctor ordered.
Too bad that the US wants to wipe out anything that looks/is commie and benefits the people and turn it into something that benefits the few.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I'd like to point out that Ben Franklin said we should have a revolution every few years just so we could weed out these helpful sort of Congress/Senate criminals legislating to line their pockets.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Hah! I fart in your general direction!
As a Canadian, I know that there's no way that they would be let in the country. We are not like that other country with its corrupt politicians that pass laws like the DMCA.
Oh wait a sec...
If you are a member of the trade union, the ip cops will come and shove it up yours, as being a separate sovereign nation wont mean diddly.
Man this is scary. Just the very idea of federal government running around to arrest people on a CIVIL issue where the burden of proof is ( basically ) reversed is frightening and completely contray to the constitution. WTF ?!?!
---- Booth was a patriot ----
First we had the WAR ON DRUGS
Then we had the WAR ON TERROR
Now we have the WAR ON COPYING
Funded by the taxpayer of course.
Deleted
Copyright cops eh? Sounds like they'd just trawl the net, connect to trackers and get a whole load of IP's.
Getting paid to surf the web and download copyrighted material? Every slashdotters dream!
It's getting RIDICULOUS... no, it's getting MORE ridiculous!
Before long, people will stop watching TV and movies because it LEADS to wanting to record from TV or buying a DVD which leads to wanting to make backups which leads to being a felon! But if you don't know what you're missing, you won't be tempted by the 'drug' that is the entertainment industry.
So now I am imagining an entire future where people are afraid to hum a tune or even create their own entertainment for fear that it is similar enough to something they never heard or saw but is currently controlled by the perpetual copyright holdings of "big media" which officially merged a couple of years ago.
Should this thing pass, darker times will be upon us... not that things aren't pretty dark now.
Actually, UN is only a loss of sovereignty for nations that do not have veto power on the security council. I know you were kidding, but I just had a 3 hour debate on this yesterday with a friend. So the ideas are clear in my mind. Sovereignty is not lost unless the overseeing administrative unit has enforcement power that the (more) local administrative unit cannot legally stop. The only enforcement power that UN has is Article 7 security council resolutions. They are the ones whose violation authorizes enforcement (as in use of weapons) by member nations. Since US has veto power over all security council resolutions, US sovereignty is not lost to the UN. But all the nations outside of the 5 permanent members have lost their sovereignty.
A better example of loss of sovereignty is probably NATO. Because the NATO supreme commander (as far as I understand -- don't quote me on it) has the power to order actions by armies of member nations.
If we were to ever enter into an international treaty that gave some overseeing administrative unit a clear power to veto our laws and was combined with an alliance that gave some supreme commander unequivocal power to order our FBI or military around, then we would (pretty much by definition) lose sovereignty. As it stands, we may still have the power to say "No" to a decision of any international organization that we've joined.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
H.R.4279
I don't even see how having that will even help their sales...
Their problem is that they're still living in a society where we had:
- No Internet.
- No home cinema systems.
- No media centers.
Many today don't even want to go to the cinemas because they think it's noisy and with annoying people in front of them, or even people telling about the events in the movie or constantly laughing at bad places. Or maybe they just want to easily go to the bathroom when they wish during a LOTR-like movie marathon. So then they pirate stuff instead of just twiddling their thumbs with a useless 50" home cinema system until the artificially delayed DVD/Blu-ray/HD-DVD release is made, usually also with artifically imposed regional restrictions.
I mean, there's a whole new field of technology at play here that completely seem to pass them. They still seem to think we are sitting on: a mix of cassette, vinyl, and CD players, and on CRT TV sets. That's what their business model is still geared for. And people today barely even own these relics anymore. They use the media in totally different ways than before.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
If this is ever actually implemented, I would taunt the motherfuckers to try and come "seize" me and whatever infringing media machine I might be using. At some point a man has to say "enough" and defend himself with violence from absurd laws.
Bot Assisted Blogging
Not to mention that other countries tend to have laws and Constitutions and claims of sovreignity over their land and inhabitants.
Just a little advance reading could spare a us a whole lot of floundering and discussion.
Lets' see.....
There's no money for fixing schools. My property taxes have gone way up due to the fact the Current Administration is cutting school aid nationwide. Lucky for my kids we are in a rich area so the parents can still pay.
We are pissing away cubic dollars in Iraq on a scheme to keep Iraqi oil off the market, protect OPEC, and keep prices high.
But, we can set up an entire law enforcement apparatus to protect the richest industry on the planet ? Oops, almost forgot, that industry also owns the media outlets (thank you FCC for allowing mass ownership of media) which the wankers rely upon to be re elected.
Corporate America has gotten just about every Christmas Present it wanted under the Bush Administration. The Bankruptcy Bill was the first shot. Next, continue to subsidize Oil and Gas companies. Make sure that all worker protections, or public protection, is de-fanged, or given to the person who used to lobby against it. Flat top mountains in West Virginia. Allow utilities to continue to build 1950's era generation plants.
Meanwhile, block stem cell research, push "abstinence", and raise the prices of contraception for poor women while making abortion less available.
Bush was honest, once, when he stood before a gathering of huge corporate benefactors, and said "Some call you the elite...I call you my base".
Next up....roadside execution for speeding.
If this is ever actually implemented, I would taunt the motherfuckers to try and come "seize" me and whatever infringing media machine I might be using. At some point a man has to say "enough" and defend himself with violence from absurd laws.
;-)
That this post is a terrorist threat. Now they won't even have to pretend to treat you fairly.
The worst thing about this from my perspective is that the US has a record of refusing to follow any foriegn laws and not allowing their own officials to be extradited to other countries if they break local laws in the course of their work.
This mean that these copyright cops will have the ability to go into a foriegn country, stomp all over the local legal system and then escape back to the US before they can be forced to account for their actions. These are not the actions of a country that wants to earn the respect of the world community.
This will not help the US cause in the long run as it will just cause even greater resentment in the countries on the receiving end of such treatment.
The obvious example is the pirate bay. If they really want to close the pirate bay they need to convince Sweden to pass tighter copyright laws, not go in and bust it illegally like they did. The problem now is that after that stunt it has made it much harder for them to convince the swedish people that such a change in law is neccessary. It has also made many european politicians scared on enacting said laws for fear of being accused of being a lapdog of a deeply unpopular president (Bush).
Maybe some of this situation will change when he leaves office but at the moment no other politician wants to appear to cosy with someone who has made some very questionable decisions and is going to be out of office soon anyway.
If the US really wants to try and encourage europe to adopt their laws, a much better start would be make some sort of concession to the european community. A good start would be allowing US troops to be prosecuted by a european criminal court for crimes they commit in Europe. We are not really that bad in Europe, we are also democratic nations who have very similar outlooks in a great many ways. If the US trusted us a little more that would most likely be reciprocated.
I dont read
Well, no, actually we all joined the WTO, which was then subverted to implement neo-imperialist rule on the globe in the name of the Great American Public. We are all very grateful, by the way, we had a real shortage of laws - thank god for the EUCD and other international laws "inspired by" the need to not get blockaded from world trade by the U.S.
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
I had a hard parsing Glickman's quote until I realized what he probably meant was "film theft costs
UN membership doesn't constitute a total loss of sovereignty for any country, primarily because the enforcement powers available; levying sanctions or making war against the violator of a resolution are available to any nation at any time anyway, with or without justification, more importantly you don't have to be a member of the UN to be sanctioned / invaded.
NATO is more interesting, but as I understand it individual countries supply forces to NATO on an ongoing or as required basis, as opposed to NATO commanders simply choosing and using NATO members troops at will.
In any case I would suggest that sovereignty can only be lost if a country enters an agreement it cannot later unilaterally remove itself from, I would suggest that the individual states of the USA have lost much of their sovereignty but not all (they can still leave?) and EU member states are reducing their own sovereignty but are no where near having lost it. A loss of sovereignty can really only come about by losing a war and being put in a position where you no longer hold any powers of ther region that was your country.
So even staying at home won't make you safe
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I agree, but you know, if I truly believed Congress was simply uninformed on these important issues, but still had the best of intentions (road to Hell being paved with them notwithstanding) I might be more understanding. Fact is, these bastards (and bitch) know exactly what they're doing, know perfectly well that they're wronger than wrong ... but are going ahead with it anyway! That's when they cross the line from being clueless to actually evil.
... they got their copyright extensions, they got the DMCA ... now they want the Feds to start cracking heads on their behalf? They are going to push this too far, because they don't seem able to stop, able to accept any limits on what they should be allowed to do. They should be happy with what they have: this is going to explode and the backlash is not going to be pretty. The Federal Government is really pushing a lot of the American people's buttons lately. Something is going to have to give.
This law is being bought and paid for by big media, like so many other "IP friendly" laws already on the books, meaning that once again we've been sold out by our elected leaders. There are countries where such corporate influence (read: corruption) is illegal, and is considered the treason that it is. It's high time time we start thinking of lobbying and (ahem!) "campaign contributions" in exactly the same way. Feel like peddling your influence to pass a law that goes directly against the best interests of the American people? Hope you can do the time. That's how it should be.
This is just sickening. I have the feeling we're not that far from Joe Public taking serious notice of this, because if the Feds start breaking down doors looking for bootleg videos there's gonna be Hell to pay. The media outfits are just drunk with power
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
What I don't get about this whole mess is the governments complete and utter trust in the industry's claims. Either they don't want to know, or they don't care (and I am speaking to both US and Canadian). The industry will have some study done, or simple just say "we lost 18 billion" due to piracy, and it is believed. Even though it is fairly easy to check, and they have been caught lying about it so many times in the past. Tell me in what other industry this would happen?
Here is my idea of how it goes down:
RIAA: WAAA WAAA WAAA! We lose money!
Gov: Whats wrong?
RIAA: Evil piracy make us lose money!
Gov: OH NOES! How much did you lose?
RIAA: 89 Kajillion Bakillion dollars!
Gov: You know that isn't a real number.
RIAA: 18 Billion dollars (evil pinky to corner of mouth)!
Gov: NO NOES! Lets make crazy laws!
RIAA: YEA!
That is completely untrue. Nobody has lost their sovereignty. Period. Should the security council decide they need to take steps of enforcement against a country (difficult since you can never get the US, China and Russia to agree on anything), then that country might have its sovereignty stepped on.
Only to an extent. If a member country decides to put limitations on the use of their troops, the NATO commander can't really overrule those.
There are numerous countries in Afghanistan who have placed strict limits on where there troops can be sent and what they can do (eg, only in the North, and in non-combat operations) -- The Dutch and the French, for example.
There is no loss of sovereignty implied in NATO membership.
Neither the UN nor NATO are routinely going around trumping domestic governments. The UN is the only way we have to get countries to try to work together. Before that, it was the League of Nations, which after WWII the US decided was ineffectual and pushed to create the UN. It's a framework to get people to try to work shit out through diplomacy and consensus.
And, for the record, the US Constitution says that any treaties you enter into become the law of the land. So, again, it's not about giving up sovereignty -- it's about sticking to your word.
But, there is NO treaty that ANY country has agreed to which allows for an external entity to come in and start bossing about their police and military unless that countries leaders have completely decided to go off the rails and do things they've promised not to, or you're in the middle of a genocide, or a war of aggression against another country. This is a uniquely American belief that someone might come in and take control of your country without a damned good reason, and agreement by almost every other country who was prepared to back it up with force.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
What you really want to know is the status of the bill. This one has just been introduced and passed to the Judiciary Committee, from the looks of it. But here's a helpful link to the list of cosponsors of the bill.
If you are represented by any of these people in Congress, you have a special duty to write and explain how poorly-represented you are.
Well if you pick a date, just let me know. I'll need to schedule some vacation time at work, and then I need to find a babysitter for the kids.
I've got American Idol scheduled on the DVR, so maybe we'll have a viewing party after we're done usurping the government.
I gave myself to Jesus, but now he never calls
Uuuuh, right Wally.
So, let's see, some multibillionaire shitbag in Hollywood wants the US .gov to send agents overseas to persecute people in other countries for dealing with objects according to their own local laws and customs.
And this isn't imperialist fascism?
JH Kunstler noted that when local architecture of the commons is reduced to cartoon houses in the burbs and megamalls, you no longer have places worth caring about. Who ever wept at the demolition of a WalMart? Ad when you get enough places in one country that are not worth caring about, you end up with a nation not worth defending.
There's another kind of architecture, and its the architecture of the mind, and it's called "Media". And when enough of it is such crap that no one cares about it, and it is seen as more of a utility than a creation, then it ceases to be a culture worth defending.
With preposterous laws like this, the USA is working very hard at becoming a nation no longer worth defending. People will simply "Walk Away" from this catastrophe of a country, or, as William S Burroughs put it:
"(Thank you America) for being the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams."
RS
If you have ANY SENSE at all, you will get out of the USA as soon as possible. The second wave of mortgage failures will come in March. Once the USA sinks, things will get tough, and legislation like the above will become commonplace, even under a Democratic Administration.
Run. Now. And when you get out, you will see what the rest of the world sees: Those people are fucking crazy.
HW
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I think a better example of something that causes lost sovereignty is some of the trade agreements such as NAFTA. One example I think of specifically is the dispute between Ethyl Corporation and Canada, in which Canada was basically forced to remove a ban on a fuel additive despite evidence of it being harmful to humans, and to pay to Ethyl corporation 13 million dollars in legal fees and lost profits. (I am aware that the link I gave is quite biased, but I just wanted to point out the result of the legal battle I am speaking of). Further down, the article reads "... Canada remains one of the few countries in the world where MMT is blended into automotive fuel.". If that is not an example of lost sovereignty, I don't know what is.
Ayn Rand once wrote, "It's difficult to rule a society of honest men. So if there aren't enough criminals, we will simply write more laws."
Is this a law that is meant to stop you from downloading music or is it meant to be broken so that the people whom it "protects" can have some power over you?
Currently we have seen that the costs for sharing only a handful of MP3s can be as much as a quarter million dollars or more after legal fees. How does anyone think that increasing fines to a half million and including jail time will be any more of a deterrent? Financial ruin was already nearly guaranteed if one was caught, if that isn't enough to scare the thousands (millions?) of file sharers then it is unlikely this will. We might also see a blow-back effect similar to when penalties for violent crimes are raised to maximum levels. e.g. if one gets life in prison for rape or murder then it induces some rapists to kill their victims since the sentence is the same and killing the victim might make it less likely to be caught. The parallel would be if you're going to be financially wiped out and sent to prison for sharing ONE song, why not simply share hundreds? You're screwed either way.
Also this brings copyright infringement from a civil tort to a criminal charge. Change of venue to courts already overburdened by America's various other "War on $CONCEPT". And why should this be a criminal offense? The system was already out of balance in favor of the copyright holder, this law would make it egregiously so. If Congress is willing to reduce copyright limits to *reasonable* lengths then maybe it would make sense, but as it stands now almost nothing created in my parent's lifetime will become public domain for me before I die. Copyright is supposed to offer limited protection in return for the work passing to public domain. If it essentially never enters public domain then why should it be protected by criminal penalties? It's like shooting someone for shoplifting, completely out of scope with both the crime and the supposed bargain between the public and copyright holders.
Also in regards to some posts saying that this law protects all equally and is not skewed in favor of large corporations, I must disagree. Large corporations could afford a judgment against them brought successfully by an individual, it would not go so well the other way around. The inherent imbalance between the resources (financial, legal and manpower) of a corporation and an individual pretty much guarantee an individual will be forced to cut a deal or risk their livelihood and freedom while a corporation could stall for years and even if convicted would be able to recover almost instantly.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
More broadly, the entire idea of state sovereignty (i.e. enumerated powers) has been emasculated. The federal government has the powers it says it has. In the good old days, they used to use the Interstate Commerce Clause to justify Federal intervention in matters Constitutionally delegated to the states; now, they rarely even bother.
Not satisfied with pitiful potential penalties of $150,000
The reason they are not satisfied has nothing to do with a perception of how extreme the punishments should be. The reason they are not satisfied is very simple:
It's not working.
The complete collection of laws, technologies, and enforcement agencies that presently exist are failing to stop the widespread practice of copyright infringement. Given that the industry controllers are stuck in the past, they are doing the only thing they know how to do: pass even more laws, make even more enforcement agencies, and make the punishments even worse.
As much as we would like to see the dinosaurs roll over and die...they don't want to. They will struggle for life, and have no qualms about causing as much waste, suffering and injustice as they can in the process.
To the RIAA/MPAA: The new world is here. You can't bring the past back. Your attempts at forcing your values on to your clients cannot succeed. All you are doing is harming yourselves and everyone else. You will continue to experience nothing but failure until you embrace the world and harmonize with the technologies that exist and the ways in which your clients want to use them. That is all.
Individual states cannot secede. That was ultimately the point of the Civil War. The slavery issue was a smokescreen; the real issue was that the national government would not allow the states that formed the Confederacy to remove themselves from the Union.
Which of course violates the premise of our government. I think that was the first major sign we were in trouble (of course allowing slavery was also wrong). If a free people can choose to form a government to protect their rights, surely they are free to disolve it?
More broadly, the entire idea of state sovereignty (i.e. enumerated powers) has been emasculated. The federal government has the powers it says it has. In the good old days, they used to use the Interstate Commerce Clause to justify Federal intervention in matters Constitutionally delegated to the states; now, they rarely even bother.
I think that largely happened when the Sentate become elected instead of appointed by State legislatures. I think its time we reverse that, and we may see states start reigning in the federal goverment.
The south, champion of States' Rights, was 'zerged FTW' by the North, who after getting the snot beaten out of it for three years, kept importing all the Irishmen and other foreigners they could, and put them under the command of a man who realized the confederate armies were the objective, not the cities.
I'm not so sure about this interpretation of history. The way I remember it, the North's army was initially commanded by a complete moron (McClellan?) who had no idea how to command an army in battle, and unsurprisingly lost many battles until he was finally replaced. General Grant was a far better commander, who won the war for the North. However, it wasn't just imported soldiers that made the difference: the North was far more industrialized than the South, which had a totally agricultural economy. Industrialization is very important when you're trying to conduct a large-scale war, as that's what builds your guns, cannons, trains, etc. In the end of the War, the South was shooting rocks out of their cannons, because they didn't have any cannonballs left.
I think the South was ultimately doomed to lose the war for exactly this reason; they didn't have the economic and industrial capacity to carry it out, and their economy was in trouble anyway. The only way they could have kept it going would have been to engage in terrorist tactics like we see today (like in Northern Ireland, Iraq, etc.), rather than having uniformed troops fighting on battlefields, which is a losing proposition when you're a weaker force.
However, the decision by the North to fight the war was definitely the wrong one, IMO. Just as the States voluntarily entered the Union, they should have the right to voluntarily leave the Union. It doesn't matter what the economic impact or whatever will be: it's their choice, for better or worse. The slavery issue was definitely a smokescreen; while slavery is certainly wrong, it was already headed for extinction, as most other developed countries at the time had banned it, and with the South's economy already headed for the toilet, and popular opinion turning away from slavery, slavery was on its last legs anyway. If the North had just allowed the Southern states to secede, their economies would have collapsed before long; they probably would have asked to rejoin the union at a later time, and we probably wouldn't see such an overbearing and bloated Federal government now.
... as intellectual property (IP).
An idea, thought, or piece of information cannot be "property". If it isn't tangible, it isn't property.
To demonstrate, tell me something about yourself. How about first name and place of birth?
OK, got it. Thanks Wally from Walla Walla.
I now have some new IP.
Hey Wally, have you forgotten your name or place of birth? No. Of course you haven't.
Therein lies the problem with IP. It can be freely copied and is limitless in supply. You can't maintain a marketplace or sustain an economy without the basic principle of supply vs. demand, at least not one we're familar with. Throw out every economics book you've ever read. These artifical restrictions on supply are a joke. You think China or the 3rd world gives a damn about our IP, copyright, trademark, or patent laws?
Will Firefly's "Chinglish" be good enough to communicate with our new landlords?