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Copy That Floppy, Lose Your Computer
Over the weekend we posted a story about a new copyright bill that creates a new govt. agency in charge of copyright enforcement. Kevin Way writes "In particular, the bill grants this new agency the right to seize any computer or network hardware used to "facilitate" a copyright crime and auction it off. You would not need to be found guilty at trial to face this penalty. You may want to read a justification of it, and criticism presented by Declan McCullagh and Public Knowledge." Lots of good followup there on a really crazy development.
Excuse me while I gather the virgin sacrifice and assemble the pentagram required to solve your problem
In case you missed the message, Don't Copy That Floppy!
(warning: may cause eye strain and/or brain damage)
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
Since the intarweb is used to facilitate copyright infringement, the gov't can seize the entire series of tubes!
An entire new agency in charge of stopping copyright violations. Wonderful. I am SO glad to know our government has its priorities straight.
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
Here is the EFF Link that should be in the article summary: http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/12/pro-ip-act-increase-infringement-penalties-and-drastically-expand-government-enfor
If someone on my schools network downloads an illegal mp3, then the RIAA has the right to confiscate and sell every single router, switch, and hub between the two people... clogging the tubes is bad enough, but taking them away and stealing them?
Live life to the fullest. It's not that life is short, but that you are dead for so long.
Fixed.
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
Amendment V
No person...shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
I understand here that "due process of law" is actually being changed to make this legal, but I feel that the following serves to define "due process of law" in a way:
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
leave the US while you can. Serious.
:)
Well, let's see what happens in the next elections. If the people lose, you're welcome to establish here below the Bravo
Based on other laws coming out in the USA in the last 8 years this isn't so bad. It just means you should do your copying on the latest most expensive machine in the local shop, report them then pick it up at auction for buttons.
Nothing new here. Civil forfeiture has been a feature of the War on Drugs for a long time; extending it to the War on Copying is an obvious strategy. The "great" thing about civil forfeiture is that the defendant isn't you, with all of your rights; in a twisted bit of legal sophistry, it's the property itself being sued by the government.
I'm sure it will be just as successful in stopping copying as it was in stopping drug use. (I'm just waiting for the violent black market in bootleg DVDs to develop.)
"History repeats itself: First as tragedy, then as farce." - Marx got that one right at least.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Hm... Lobby, lobbier, lobbiest...
OK, it all checks out... You can go about your business. Move along.
Bow-ties are cool.
Look at civil forfeiture law in the US. The government can sue your property and is given the ability to seize and sell your property based on a mere probable cause that the property was used for criminal purposes.
http://www.isil.org/resources/lit/looting-of-america.html
Are you suggesting that here, in the Land of the Free(TM), that the government would seize and auction off your assets for a copyright "crime" even if you haven't been adjudicated as guilty? Oh, come on.....next you'll try to tell me that they'll seize and auction your car and keep your cash if they even suspect you of having drugs! (Chuckle) Yeah....like that's gonna happen....
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
In addition: Amendment IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Nobody challenged it when "drug dealers" were deprived of their money and belongings, without due process.
This is just the next chapter.
Please tag a story 'typo' when you see this. It'll alert us admins to a problem and it'll get fixed in probably less time than it takes to write a comment about it...
Really, is it just my perception or has the number of stuff that was made a law only to be killed by the courts as unconstitutional skyrocketed? I really wonder, why that is.
Don't know if there's a trend, but it does happen a lot. I believe reason is for election grandstanding. Come the following election, some Congressman can say he's tough on X while his opponent's soft, where X=[crime, guns, drugs, violent games, porn, sex offenders, copyright, gay rights, etc]. This works well for both campaign ads as well as soliciting contributions from companies who take an interest in these matters. It doesn't matter if the courts kill the law; the poor guy still tried and it's not his fault those Commies on the bench ruined everything. Or so he says.
Similarly, that's also where you'll see the 417-3 votes, where somebody will sponsor a bill against killing kittens, with a line item here or there including funding for pork projects. Nobody can vote against your amendment without voting for killing kittens. And the three people who do vote against it will have fun come re-election time, when the opponent saturates TV with commercials that state how much the guy enjoys killing kittens.
They're not "undercover cops" or "plainclothes policemen". Call a spade a spade - they're God damned Secret Police, no different than the Communist KGB or the Nazi's Secret Police. If "crimes" like drug possession, gambling, and prostitution weren't crimes there would be no reason or excuse to have Secret Police.
So now you have a "crime" that's a civil matter and you forfeit property without compensation or trial. Thank you, "Partnership for a Drug Free America". I hope your God damned children become needle junkies you fucking assholes, because drug laws make their becoming junkiest MORE likely. Marijuana doesn't lead to harder drugs, marijuana LAWS leas potsmokers to harder drugs.
How far does this slippery slope slide? I love my country, I hate its government. Perhaps one day my descendants will again have a representative government, rather than the one party plutocracy it has become.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Due process is out the window since the War on Drugs. And some folks challenged it, but the difference was, no one "liked" the drug dealers... when Grandma loses her computer to the government... people might start taking the 4th amendment seriously. But I doubt the sheeple will notice. Such is life after soma.
At least they had a warrant (such that it was...) when they stole the drug dealers' property. Now they don't even need that to grab your stuff.
scared yet?
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Er, big difference. If you aren't found guilty, you get your boat and other confiscated things back.
This specifically entails skipping the due process involved. Basically, they can write you a spurious ticket and take your hardware...and never give it back, irregardless of whether you're guilty or not.
This crap really has to stop. Someone has to draw a line. No, actually, the whole country needs to draw a line, and demand that everything that has already crossed that line be revoked. Things in the US are starting to cross over into the land of the surreal. Jumped the shark is an understatement, and I KNOW that this is not the kind of thing your average American citizen wants to see happen.
No Comment.
I don't (any more). I pitched a cigarette out the window once. Gog popped for littering (rightly) and attempted arson (WTF?). I was in the middle of an urban jungle with no sign of plant life for at least a mile in any direction. When I went to court I pled not guilty to the arson charge and "guilty with an apology your honor" to the littering charge. The judge asked "what" and I replied that though I had done it, if I had any idea about the cost and hassle of what I had done you could believe I'd not have done it and would certainly never do it again. Fortunately she believed me on that count and thus I only paid $360 for the littering ($100 * court fees). As to the arson charge she asked me why I believed I was not guilty, requiring an explanation of the complete lack of vegetation, and similar lack of intent, along with the reasonable belief that my smoldering smoke would be extinguished by the *rain* that was falling at the time. Found not guilty.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
This is the same crap as the drug seizure laws. Everyone thought--great, take the houses, cars, property of the drug dealers. However, what's ended up happening is people are having their cars seized because a friend had a small amount of pot. Worse yet people are having large amounts of cash seized with the attitude that you must prove yourself innocent. It doesn't matter that no drugs were found or any evidence of drug dealing, just the fact that you're carrying a large amount of cash is considered a crime. And good luck getting it back!
Friends, our freedoms are being eroded away while we stand by. According to the Supreme Court, municipalities can grab your land under imminent domain to sell to Wal-Mart or someone building condos. Police can seize your cash for no reason other than you're carrying it and now they want the right to seize you computers on the claim that you might have illegally downloaded something. It's got to stop or this really will be a police state.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
The 4th amendment to the US constitution, that authority that describes the limits of federal law, emphasis mine:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I'm having a lot of trouble reading this in any way at all that can justify trial- and conviction-free seizure and disposal of a citizen's property.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Due process is out the window since the War on Drugs.
I'm sure a lot of people have no idea what you're talking about. This started because state police in many states were empowered to seize property, without due process, and *pocket* the proceeds. This created an environment where almost every state cop in the US, where this was implemented, was actually a criminal. Several states, after a decade or more of complaints, finally started to investigate.
It seems it worked like this. Cop sees nice expensive car. Cop pulls over the car. Cop claims you are a drug deal and plants evidence. Cop seizes you car and everything in it. You are arrested. Drug charges were often dropped. You car and all your property within the car is sold at auction. Cop pockets all of the proceeds. Normally out of state cars were the preferred targets, leave you little recourse. And in the end, who wants to champion "drug dealers." States only started to act when it was found that the majority of the "drug dealers" fit a certain profile such as "affluent retirees" passing through the state.
States such as GA, LA, MS, and AL were especially bad. The solution was to tell the police to stop it. They couldn't simply arrest all of the criminal cops because in those four states, as much as 90% of the state police would be behind bars. It was thought that created too much of a risk to public safety to put criminals in jail.
So chances are, if you've been ticketed by a state policeman in these states, you were ticketed by a criminal that has commit more crimes than most any criminal currently convicted, sitting in jail right now.
...any computer or network hardware used to "facilitate" a copyright crime and auction it off. So this includes entire ISPs and root DNS servers?Your ad here.