Infringement 'Detrimental To the Public Health, Safety'

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has declared that copyright infringement 'substantially interferes with the interest of the public in the quality of life and community peace, lawful commerce in the county, property values, and is detrimental to the public health, safety, and welfare of the county's citizens, its businesses and its visitors.' You might laugh, but that means they can close up a property for up to one year for violations of the anti-infringement ordinance [PDF] and the owner can be fined $1,000 for each infringing work produced on site. Not to mention the penalties in the PRO-IP Act, which just sailed through the House."

Comments

The blade cuts both ways

[statusbar]

How many companies who currently violate the GPL and LGPL can these new laws be used against?

--jeffk++

Re:So what's it gonna take...

[explosivejared]

Dude what are you talking about!? The MESSIAH himself, Obama peace be upon his name, is all-knowing and can at the bat of an eyelash bring about such a transformative change that the whole intellectual property system will be at peak efficiency!

Kidding aside, Obama does speak about reforming the whole intellectual property system (especially patents, which I do realize are different from copyrights and trade marks), albeit with sort of vague language. It's hard to quantify what exactly he means when he talks about reform, but hey at least he realizes something is wrong with the way we're going. Don't take my word for it, though.

I've looked at the other two candidates statements and again find nothing definitive. So I see it breaking down like this. Obama talks about rewriting intellectual property, writes some dream bill, only to have it obliterated in Congress due equally to his lack of commitment and Congress's general distaste for effective legislation. McCain and Clinton would probably be open to reform, but would jump at the chance to think of the children and gravitate towards anything that hurts filing sharing due to the whole child pornography thing.

In the end, there just aren't enough people that care. Now if we could find some way to relate copyright reform to gasoline prices, we might have a shot. People don't realize how important competent legislation is when it comes to an economy that becomes more dependent on the rapid share of information every day. The legal morass doesn't end with the MPAA and RIAA. We have patent trolls and perpetual litigators making things worse for everyone.

Re:That's funny

[pipingguy]

"copyright infringement...is detrimental to the public health..."

I don't type "WTF" much, but WTF?

It looks like Tim Ball was right when he wrote, "For years I wondered what extremists provide to any debate. I've learned it is to define the limits for the majority. By taking extreme positions they cause the majority to say, hold on, now you are going too far.".

Re:So what's it gonna take...

[RiotingPacifist]

OFC a carismatic democratic president could go to a democratic congress and say "hey how about you suggest this?" and they will say "how high?"

Now, if you really want to blame this on somebody, I hear your congressmen takes letters. Mine does, but he ignores them. The trick is in the subject, I rekon you might be more successful if you address them all "private and confidential from AC.inc, important information regarding campaign finance" either that or "NAKED PICS OF [insert congressmans fetish here] INSIDE"

Re:This always happens

[mrchaotica]

So the United States was serving a smaller group when women got the vote? When minorities got the vote? And when poll taxes were eliminated?

Yes, actually, for several reasons:

• Making the system more "democratic" pleases the proles, both from the warm fuzzies they get by feeling as if they have a voice, and by enabling to vote themselves bread and circuses.
• It leads the proles to disregard the elite's authoritarian schemes (E.g., "How can they be power-hungry autocrats when they just gave us sufferage?"). What the proles don't realize is that voting doesn't matter when the elite chooses who gets on the ballot. Voting is an illusion of choice.
• It dumbs down the political process so that leaders can maintain power via emotional appeal instead of rational debate. That's good for the elite because it means they don't have to defend themselves against outsiders with good ideas.

Of course, the issue (at least in the case of the U.S) isn't that simple. You also have to consider the effects of the gradual failing of federalism, etc.

Re:So what's it gonna take...

[Tuoqui]

Like some dumb legislator said... If intellectual property is property then there should be property tax on it.

Re:perspective

[penix1]

There's a hundred things in front of it that are more important. It's not like you'll die if you can't download videos for free. You've got to keep things in perspective.

Let's put things into perspective then....

The reason you have such a big uproar and draconian "IP" legislation being presented in the first place is because it is the only thing the US has left of its industry. Everything from steal to food production has been outsourced to the maximum extent possible. The dregs that are left behind are the service industries like McDonalds. The only thing in the US bigger than government grant of monopoly is government contracting which is another form of monopoly I won't go into here.

That's why you see term extensions on the monopoly grant. That's why you see legislation proposing criminal prosecution instead of civil.

A little off topic but related was the BRAC Commission hearings. I never saw so many congress critters crawl out of the woodwork as I did when they were proposing the closure of military bases. Again, it comes down to the US not having any real industry. Close the bases and watch whole towns dry up. It's the same with "IP".