The Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2004
was recently introduced in the Senate (09.29) and what I find so interesting about it is one of Congress' "findings" - (4) Many computer users simply believe that they will not be caught or prosecuted for their conduct. The interesting section - "SEC. 9. SENSE OF THE CONGRESS ON NEED TO TAKE STEPS TO PREVENT ILLEGAL ACTIVITY ON PEER-TO-PEER SERVICES." outlines Congress' sense about the illegal activity. The kicker is that the Supreme Court has held that as long as the central service is not hosting anything then the true p2p is not copyright infringement thus the whole need for RIAA to attack the general public and end-users.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, maybe not that much time.
The Piracy Deterrence and Education Act of 2004 was recently introduced in the Senate (09.29) and what I find so interesting about it is one of Congress' "findings" - (4) Many computer users simply believe that they will not be caught or prosecuted for their conduct. The interesting section - "SEC. 9. SENSE OF THE CONGRESS ON NEED TO TAKE STEPS TO PREVENT ILLEGAL ACTIVITY ON PEER-TO-PEER SERVICES." outlines Congress' sense about the illegal activity. The kicker is that the Supreme Court has held that as long as the central service is not hosting anything then the true p2p is not copyright infringement thus the whole need for RIAA to attack the general public and end-users.
For the text of the pending amendment to the Copyright Act, see the Lib of Cong website. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:h.r.0 4077:
Just because a tool may potentially infringe copyright, does not make it an instrumentality of copyright infringement.