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Controversial Section of PRO-IP Act Cut

Posted by Soulskill on from the now-just-cut-the-other-sections dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Rep. Berman (D-CA) has removed the controversial section 104 from his PRO-IP Act. That section would have multiplied the already excessive statutory damages for infringement in the case of compilations, making the damages for infringing upon the copyrights of a single average CD rise into the millions of dollars. This change came after proponents of the amendment were unable to cite even one case where the statutory damages recovered were insufficient. But don't let the article fool you into thinking that the PRO-IP Act is no longer controversial now that this one section is gone, the act still creates copyright cops who are authorized to seize people's computers."

9 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Time for the old Dead Man's Switch by palegray.net · · Score: 2, Informative

    You could always TrueCrypt encrypt the contents of your drive to guard against seizure efforts without hampering your own use of the system.

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    512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
  2. Re:Time for the old Dead Man's Switch by QuantumG · · Score: 2, Informative

    When it comes to complying with a court order to turn over computer files, turning over encrypted computer files is not complying with the order. It's really not that hard.

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    How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. Re:Time for the old Dead Man's Switch by hedwards · · Score: 5, Informative

    Passwords, pass phrases and keys are, for better or worse, considered to be protected by the 5th amendment.

    Unless law enforcement or the copyright holder can crack the security on it, there is no way that they can compel a person to hand over the files at this point.

  4. Re:Time for the old Dead Man's Switch by QuantumG · · Score: 3, Informative
    Do you have any case law to back this up or are you just talking out of your ass? Seriously, the courts see it no different to requiring you to hand over the keys to a filing cabinet. You're free to refuse, at which time you are in contempt of court and will be spending the remainder of your life in jail, except for every 30 days, when you will be brought before the judge to be asked if you are now ready to hand over the keys.

    or the copyright holder Huh? What do you think we're talking about?

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  5. Re:Time for the old Dead Man's Switch by Cairnarvon · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9834495-38.html

    So yes, case law does back it up.

  6. Re:Good example. by calebt3 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Rep. Berman (D-CA) has removed the controversial section 104 from his PRO-IP Act.
  7. Re:War on Copyright by wk633 · · Score: 3, Informative

    1% of adults, not of the general population. Not that it affect your point.

  8. Re:Time for the old Dead Man's Switch by Wordplay · · Score: 2, Informative

    Passkey-as-testimony was covered a couple of parents up; the precedent's been set. This subthread is from QuantumG suggesting that the same protection doesn't apply to civil court.

    Re: DNA vs. passkey, the generality seems to be that in security terms, "what-you-are" or "what-you-have" factors are evidence (they can be taken with a warrant) but a "what-you-know" factor is testimony and cannot be forcibly extracted from you (Fifth Amendment).

  9. Re:Time for the old Dead Man's Switch by vuffi_raa · · Score: 2, Informative

    The main point of TrueCrypt (as I understand it) being that it's impossible for the prosecution to provide any evidence that what they see isn't everything you've got. No evidence you aren't complying = no leg to stand on. providing encrypted files is compliance so long as you have the decryption key provided as well or can show an attempt to provide the key- the fact of the matter though is that if all of your data is encrypted the cost for discovery in a civil case would be so high that it would be ridiculous to pay for it (that would be the burden of the litigant and not the defense- defense would only have to provide the data post discovery in compliance with the submission by the litigant (or opposing counsel) so you could theoretically turn over the drive and it would be up to whoever is suing you to decrypt the drive- in the realm of e-discovery there are only certain vendors that handle encryption and that would be in the forensics and not in your standard lit support vendor/service beaurau, so the cost would be generally high per piece of media. Following this the review process would be pretty high as well considering the price point that we charge at our company usually comes out to $1-3 per doc give or take (depending on the client, population, etc.) after all is said and done and that is 1/2 to 1/3 of the standard rate for edoc reviewing at most companies (we have a damn fine stat on recall and precision as well) so imagine that you have a couple of terabytes of data at home which isn't hard considering you can drop a terabyte in your desktop nowadays, the cost that would be incurred during the discovery process alone would be pretty high for say, the RIAA to sue someone who not only will never have the $ to pay on a suit, but also may or may not even have any files that are incriminating. When it comes down to it the economics on consumer IP cases make zero sense, unlike corporate B2B, where you are actually looking to recover losses on a product base and are assured a return on a ruling or settlement.