Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Copyright Cops

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved the EIPA (the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008), which would create copyright cops. And these cops would take over the RIAA's War on Sharing by filing civil lawsuits and using civil forfeiture laws to take any and all computers engaged in infringement. Worse, they would even seize computers (such as servers or database farms) that house the data of innocent people, and these people would not have any right to get their data back. At best the 'virtual bystanders' who happened to have data on a computer used for infringement could get a protective order saying that no one should go rummaging through their stuff. Perhaps the only good thing in the bill is that they've excluded DMCA circumvention from the list of grounds for seizure. So while the Senators believe this is needed to combat foreign copyright infringement cartels, it's entirely likely that innocent people will be harmed by this law."

Comments

Re:More flaimbait posts.

[gstoddart]

Hey, look, yet another biased ignorant post submitted by "I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property" and posted by kdawson.

Dude, did you read TFA? Because, if the way ars describes it is accurate, the whole law is pretty much inflammatory.

It's downright scary!! The federal government will now pursue civil matters on behalf of private entities, with the inclusion for collateral damage of seizure of entire server farms. So, if you host with someone, and one of their customers infringes, you could lose all of your stuff with little or no recourse.

This is a very scary precedent, and it seems to blur some historical distinctions between federal agencies and private interests.

Cheers

Senate Judiciary Committee Members

[Attila Dimedici]

Anybody else notice that one of the members on this committee is Joe Biden, Senator from Delaware and VP nominee of the Democratic Party.

Re:Senate Judiciary Committee Members

[danzona]

The Judiciary Committee voted to pass the bill 14-4 Thursday; voting "no" were Senators John Kyl of Arizona, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Sam Brownback of Kansas, and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, all Republicans. Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, was absent for the vote.

It's just a committee vote

[Reality Master 201]

Not a good thing, but it's not law yet. You still have time to write your congresscritters.

And I see it's tagged "democrats." I find the party's support of the copyright lobby to be rather dismaying, but let's not ignore the fact that more than half of the Republicans on the committee also voted in favor. They're all willing to suck off the media companies, cause most people don't really know enough to care, and most of those that do just bitch about on slashdot.

Re:Your tax money at work

[dkleinsc]

Which is basically a form of command economy called socialism.

No it isn't: It's a form of command economy called fascism.