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PRO-IP Act Passes Judiciary Committee
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Pro-IP Act has passed the Judiciary Committee unanimously, thanks to the support of committee chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). We've discussed this before — it's the same bill which would create copyright cops with the power to seize computers, when powers like that have been systematically abused in other areas. But, apparently, they think the bill is just wonderful now, simply because they cut the provision that would've increased statutory damages while keeping the rest. This is the same bill that William Patry called the 'most outrageously gluttonous IP bill ever introduced in the US.'"
While we're on the subject of intellectual property, Canadian law professor Michael Geist gave a talk on Monday about "copyright myths."
I mean the secret police worked out well for Nazi Germany right?
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
When a fed comes to your door, I have three words for you. Headshots headshots headshots. They wear armored vests and helmets so aim for the eyes. (paraphrased)
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
Because that's how you gain power. By making criminals of your subjects, you gain power over them - the power to threaten them with fines, imprisonment, or death. How can your government control you if you've broken no law? It can't -- at least, not reliably -- so it makes up laws that are impossible to follow or interpret, and in so doing, forces us to jump through its hoops to avoid imprisonment. It doesn't matter whether they catch all the "criminals", only that they catch enough to make examples of. Eventually, you find yourself complying, if for no other reason than that you're afraid that someday you might be picked as the "example".
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens' What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, 1957
And for those who automatically reject everything Rand wrote (because they don't like some of what Rand wrote), how about a former Attorney General and US Supreme Court Justice?
"With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him." - Robert H. Jackson, 1940
And then your Federal overlords would threaten to withhold highway funding, and your state legislature would cave.
Something another /.er posted at some point that I found interesting:
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545 People
By Charlie Reese --
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, The Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 300 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress.
In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority.
They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing.
I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.
What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall.
No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.
The president can only propose a budget.
He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House?
She is the leader of the majority party.
She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want.
If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.
I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.
When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ.
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like 'the economy,' 'inflation' or 'politics' that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 5
The copyright cops have to follow due process and you have the right to a jury tail.
My goodness, what a protected life you must lead.
The reality is that cops follow procedure when and if they feel like it. Furthermore, merely being accused of a crime is a punitive action in this country (taken before you even get your due process and your jury trial.) Getting arrested is no fun, especially if you haven't done anything. Then you have the joyful experience of defending yourself before said jury, and when you lose because the copyright owners have unlimited funds and you do not, you're life is thoroughly trashed. That's even more true when you're fighting for your rights in a criminal court, versus a civil one.
So be very, very careful of accepting any newfound powers our government arrogates to itself, especially those granted at the behest of the private sector.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Dude, police appropriate goods that are "believed" to have been purchased with drug money all the time. It's up to the owner to prove that they were not. If that's not a violation of due process (innocent until proven guilty?) then what is?
How we know is more important than what we know.
It's not merely the DMCA that is criminal. The N.E.T. act in fact turned a substantial percentage of the entire U.S. population into felons. In particular essentially everyone who has ever used P2P at all - tens of millions of people right there - are felons. And it goes beyond that. Two elementary school children who swap oldskool audiocassette tapes are felons. And more.
The United States No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act), a federal law passed in 1997, provides for criminal prosecution of individuals who engage in copyright infringement, even when there is no monetary profit or commercial benefit from the infringement. Maximum penalties can be five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. -- The term "financial gain" includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works.
Title 17 United States Code
Section 506 Criminal offenses
(a) Criminal Infringement. --
(1) In general. -- Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed --
(A) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain;
(B) by the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000; or
(C) by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.
So under section (A) it is Criminal Infringement if you infringe and have "receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works", criminalizes ANY P2P use if you upload some much as a single file and download so much as a single file. Or if you exchange some much as a an audiocassette mix tape, or almost anything else.
Under section (B) "reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copies or phonorecords of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $1,000 pretty well covers any nontrivial uploading anywhere or almost any sort of nontrivial distribution at all, even if you never receive anything at all.
Section (C) criminalizes any "pre-release" leak whatsoever. Note that later text "clarifies" that a movie released to movie theaters is still in "pre-release", so any leak of a movie running in theaters but "has not been made available in copies for sale to the general public in the United States in a format intended to permit viewing outside a motion picture exhibition facility" is criminal.
Prison sentence:
Up to 10 years for a second offense.
Up to 5 years for "the reproduction or distribution, including by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500". (Which would cover moderate P2P usage.)
Up to 1 year "in any other case". (Covering effectively anyone who has ever touched P2P at all, any anyone who has done any of a number of other trivial things such as swap mix tapes.)
I figure the US population is currently subject to well over a hundred million person-years in prison.
And for bonus points, I love the way industry lawyers pulled off most of this insane law by slipping an innocent looking sentence into the DEFINITIONS section of law, and advertising their beloved bill as merely updating copyright law to properly deal with commercial criminal infringement operations. That's the typical sort of thing that goes on when you literally allow industry lawyers to write the laws we pass.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.