PRO-IP and PIRATE Acts Fused Into New Bill

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) have just sponsored a new bill, the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008, which would combine the worst parts of the PRO-IP Act and the PIRATE Act. The basic idea is pretty simple: expand the Federal government to create something like the Department of Homeland Security for IP. The Copyright Czar then polices the internet and clogs the courts with thousands of civil lawsuits against individual infringers so the RIAA doesn't have to. Feel free to contact your representatives with your feelings about this bill. Right now, they believe the bill (PDF) will 'protect jobs.'"

Comments

Protect jobs?

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Ermm.....more likely "will protect the stream of political contributions and lobbying money from the RIAA/MPAA/etc."

Re:Protect jobs?

[thermian]

the theory goes that if intellectual property can be protected totally, then money will be made in large amounts.

What it actually means is that as soon as profits are assured by this sort of action we will see distribution channels becoming more powerful, taking a bigger cut, and IP owners getting a smaller piece of the pie.

Not that it would work, no government that criminalises millions of its own citizens has done well in the long term.

Re:Protect jobs?

[Cheesey]

How many people are in prison for nonviolent drugs offences, "crimes" that wouldn't even be illegal in a free country? You can criminalise millions of people as long as the majority has a reason to look down on them; you can prohibit anything that the majority doesn't do (or won't admit to doing).

We can expect the War on Pirates to be the same runaway success as the War on Drugs. I think they will probably eventually succeed in forcing piracy off the public Internet, just as they forced drug dealers into the back streets. The pirating will, of course, continue by sneakernet.

Re:Protect jobs?

[thermian]

in this case the criminalised group would be predominantly middle class, since that is the social group with the highest percentage of internet access.

No-one cares if you criminalise lower class/unemployed/homeless/poor people. Really, they don't. Its amazing how little people with even a little success care about people less well off then them. It sounds cynical, but I'm only being honest. How many friends do you have that aren't in or above your social class?

Criminalise people who are successful, have nice houses, jobs, and are otherwise highly respectable, and you have a potential storm on your hands.

Re:Protect jobs?

[gerf]

Obviously we need another way to fun politicians then. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court gave businesses the rights of citizens, which in this case facilitates a de facto oligarchy.

The only solution, in my mind, would be for individuals to outnumber the businesses in their influence on Washington. There are only a few ways we have of influencing our representitives: Vote, Send money, campaign. What we need is a solution that combines those traits and organizes the real populace. I.E. a popular PAC.

What I'd like to see someone create is a website where an individual could in essence bribe their own representative by promising to donate $xx.xx if they vote correctly on a certain issue, promise that they will remember that vote (reminded by said website when election time comes), and that the general issue will be talked about/watched by that individual in the future. Imagine a House member receiving a message that they would receive $50,000 for their campaign in 3 years and that 5000 people will remember this particular vote when election times come around. Normally, they'd expect everyone to have forgotten the issue by that time, and not vote according to how the people think is best. Of course the site/PAC/whatever would have to be independent of party affiliation and open to both sides of every issue. Individuals can't be expected to watch every bill, so they'd have to be able to filter out what to watch for, and how votes are handled. Also, other PACs could use the site's infrastructure for payments or subscribing their own reviews of bills (a gargantuan effort as it is).

This would all be akin to the Ron Paul effort, where individuals showed a great resolve. On the presidential level, perhaps that effort wasn't great enough. But imagine influencing Representatives in the House or on State levels. Truly, some gains could be made there.

There may be something already like this, and it'd be difficult to manage, but it's the best idea I've had to correct many wrongs we've seen recently.

Re:Protect jobs?

[Scroatzilla]

I wonder what you mean by "shitty to be an artist"? All of this IP madness is predicated on middle men looking for the next best thing to distribute that will maximize return on investment. The reason they were even able to weasel into that spot they're in is because their artistic "victims" have based their decisions on wishes to become rich and famous.

The fact is that, particularly with music and movies since they have such high exposure these days, what is under contention is only the tip of the iceberg for consumable art/IP that is available. With the internet as a distribution center, this legal wrangling really is irrelevant to contemporary artists.

For any artist interested in simply exposing their talents (or lack thereof), this is quite an exciting time. If anything, this has opened people's eyes to the leaky shark tank that is the true nature of Big Media, and the fact that they don't HAVE to dive into it. Business people can do a lot of things to generate revenue, but they are really bad at being creative-- today's artists are slowly realizing that the power in any business relationship is (or can be) theirs in the end.

Re:Protect jobs?

[illumin8]

Or a Jail Warden..

It's gonna be shitty to be an artist though ..

Actually, I believe the only way to break this law is to make it impossible for the government to prosecute. Everyone should just become basement "artists" and publish IP on the web. Put blogs up, and then force the government to prosecute Google, Yahoo, MSN search, for indexing your blog. Use automation to file copyright complaints in the millions against every index on the web. Overburden the courts with so many fake lawsuits that the government has no choice but to back down.

Our legislators have proven that they're bought and paid for by the lobbyists. It's past the point of them representing the people.

It's time for civil disobedience, and I think they'll find that there is no such thing as enforceable IP on the web.

Re:Why do we need this?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Who's passing a bill? They introduce it, it gets shot down. Repeat. The other two didn't pass, did they? Everybody's happy. The corporations think that they're getting value for their money, the politicans pocket the campaign contributions, and slashdot readers get to froth at the mouth and try to construct new metaphors to explain IPR violations. Everyone wins!

Re:Amazing...

[TubeSteak]

This bill basically gives federal prosecutors the right to bring a civil suit against infringers on behalf of the copyright owner

The definition of a civil lawsuit includes the idea that the victim brings the lawsuit on their own behalf and pays their own legal fees.

If Federal Prosecutors are going to be bringing these lawsuits on the victim's behalf, maybe we should change the standard of proof from 'a preponderance' to 'beyond a reasonable doubt'.

Re:Its unbelievable !

[TubeSteak]

how can the ELECTED senators in your country can easily move against the wishes of the people, so blatantly, so fearlessly, so hypocritically ? unbelievable.

Because it is expensive and difficult to recall an ELECTED Senator, they generally get to do what they want for six years.

The fact that the majority of them get re-elected suggests that more often than not, whatever pork they bring home and put on their constituents' table outweighs the 'bad' votes they had to make in return.

The solution is simple!

[gabrieltss]

If everyone would quite buying the RIAA music, quite pirating it even. Quit buying the damn DVD's, quite going to see the movies, quit pirating movies. Show a complete and total drop I'm talking FLATLINE of sales and use for music and movies by the MAFIAA. What will be their argument be for their lost salse then? They would lose money to BUY politicians and would have to go out of business at some point. I hear you saying "boycotts just don't work." Why don't they? Because people have to have the latest RIAA pushed band's CD, they have to go see the lateset greatest MPAA pushed movie. "Hey when is American Idol on?". I haven't bought an RIAA labeld CD in 10 years I gave the RIAA my middle finger a long time ago. Instead of watching a movie I just read a book or play a video game. F@ck the MPAA too! America your deserving all the crap that is comming down on you - because your too damn lazy to do a damn thng about it. But, some of us still give a crap!

Me I wrote my senators and told them they should not vote for this crap. If they do it will show me that they have been bought off by the RIAA/MPAA and that I'll be informing as many of their "constiuants" as I can about their pro-corporate, anti-citizen votes.

Both republican & democrats are against the pe

[viking80]

The republican party is prioritizing business interests over consumers any time the have a chance.
And the democrats are all cozy and in bed with the Hollywood elite.

Expect RIAA, Viacom, Hollywood and all other companiers with IP content to consistently get everything they want from Wahington. As a consumer, dont even try to get your hopes up. You will continue to get screwed.

Just as a reminder: After entertainment became a big business with lobbyists around 1920, *no* new copyrighted work have expired. Every 10 years or so, it has been extended by at least 10 years, and is now about two lifetimes.

Re:publicity good, piracy bad

[ultranova]

That doesn't mean piracy is not a problem for us. Piracy can be a BIG problem. Ask any software or game or music creator if all web traffic is worth the same for example. I know tons of game devs, and the consensus is that traffic from these sites:

slashdot
digg
boingboing

is virtually worthless. Or even undesirable, because you get bandwidth with no sales, due to the predominance of piracy amongst that crowd. In contrast getting general traffic from google, or from game review sites is WAY more attractive, because that audience is more supportive of IP, and happy to buy the product.

And yet you still put the address of your site in your signature. There seems to be a logical disconnect between that action and what you just said. Please explain ?

Re:publicity good, piracy bad

[kaos07]

You're the creator of Democracy 2 right?

I'm not sure how you feel about this, but this is my personal experience with piracy and your game.

I heard about Democracy, checked out the site, thought it looked pretty cool and headed over to The Pirate Bay were there about a dozen torrents. Soon enough I got over the game and then Democracy 2 came out, which is a A LOT better, and once again headed over to The Pirate Bay to play it. I liked I so much that I decided to buy it. Which I did, yesterday. I figured "Well this is one guy making a really fun and interesting game, he gets all the money and it's only $20! So now I'm enjoying it legally, you've got your money and everyone is happy. Thanks to The Pirate Bay.