Congress Declares War on File Leakers 1345
An anonymous reader submits "Bush is expected to sign a law that essentially makes it a crime punishable by up to three years in jail for a user to put a single 'copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released.' Whichever side you're on in the copyright debate, you have to agree this legislation is draconian and excessive, to say the least."
Draconian? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why? The damages are greater to the copywrite holder.
Yes, I believe copywrite law is being abused (by both the (c) holder AND the (c) violator) -- however, this doesn't appear to me to be an abuse...
"Common Carrier" - what about sites that host it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Enjoyed my fun little christmas hoax [komar.org] - help me do it for real! ;-) [komar.org]
context and Indie Distribution (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, shit. (Score:5, Interesting)
John Rowland [wikipedia.org] defrauded the state of Connecticut, and will be serving a measly single fucking year for it. Pimply-faced teenagers will spend more time being rectally plundered by delinquents named "Li'l Dawg" than our esteemed public servant will for racketeering, conspiract, et al.
ARGH!
--grendel drago
Draconian (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why we can't have nice things (Score:2, Interesting)
Having said that, I agree with this law. Why? Because it is specifically targetting the ones who ARE depriving the studios and artists of revenue. Releasing something that hasn't hit the streets yet SHOULD be illegal. I can only hope that they do not use this as a stepping stone to get all copyright infringement turned into a criminal act, instead of the current civil status.
Legitimate pre-release postings (Score:2, Interesting)
Please review text before trolling (Score:4, Interesting)
[S.167.RH] [loc.gov]
What the?! (Score:2, Interesting)
We need to stop this.
Another Big Brother law (Score:5, Interesting)
But this also appears to apply to anyone who "leaks" information that the owner doesn't really want out there, ever. Without a deadline on the "release" date, material can be embargoed forever. That's how Big Brother can put information into a Memory Hole, and put anyone who lets it out into Room 101. It accompanies the DMCA stream that makes information Go Away Permanently when its DRM is made unreadable: If it's on a short-lived medium (some DVDs and CDs) and can't be copied, or uses a DRM that is time-limited, then once it goes, it goes, and trying to keep the information alive becomes a Crime Against The State. These secondary agendas are not obvious to the mainstream press, but the Fatherland Security Police apparatus is well aware of how these laws can be used against political opponents.
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:1, Interesting)
Sue them! (Score:5, Interesting)
"Force multiplier" (Score:3, Interesting)
Granted it's theft, but theft of one $8.00 movie ticket at the most.
Not at all. They're trying to stop the filesharing at the source with this. Keep people from leaking the movie in the first place. To go with your analogy, it's like stealing the ticket machine and giving it to a guy at Kinkos who can make reasonable facsimiles to get everyone in town into the movie.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)
I am on the side of reducing copyright to a more reasonable time-frame. Five years after the death of the author would be plenty, IMHO.
Were I a King of the US, I would declare that getting rid of copyright entirely would be even better. People wrote some pretty good stuff before the concept of copyright existed, so I disagree that it would all disappear after it was wiped out.
And I do not "have to agree" that it's "draconian" and in fact, I don't agree.
If you are going to bother to have copyright law matter at all, the only way to effectively enforce it is to come down hard on the first person to illegally distribute it. Once it's scattered all over usenet and various torrent sites, it's too late to do jack shit about it.
So, unless everybody wants to agree to my kooky libertarian ideal of abolishing copyright entirely (and we all know that such a thing will never happen), then we need a big hammer to enforce the law as it exists.
Re:Can't wait to see... (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple. Lock up every college kid in the country, and then see what their parents think of this new legislation.
Re:Draconian? (Score:1, Interesting)
This is a federal law, and under policies enacted by former attorney general John Ashcroft federal prosecutors are required to prosecute for the crime with the highest possible sentence (no more plea-bargaining a file leaking charge down to petty theft), and if the suspect is convicted federal judges are required to impose the maximum possible sentence for that crime.
There's no room for the judge to apply common sense in US federal courts anymore. Under present policy, if you are convicted of file leaking you will go to federal "pound me in the ass" prison for a full three years, no questions asked.
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never so much as considered attempting to download a movie. The amount of effort that goes into pirating such things when you could just drive to a video store and pay a very reasonable couple of bucks boggles my mind. But honestly, at this point I'm inclined to just start pirating movies in bulk without even ever watching a single one of them, just for the purpose of distributing them to others. The movie industry feels like their customers are insidious little criminals out to destroy them? Well fine. Then I want to actually start acting like one.
They shit on the laws of my country, I start shitting on them. It's the least they deserve.
Re:Draconian? (Score:2, Interesting)
Let me put this into perspective. If I was to beat you with a pipe but do not cause serious long term issues, it would still be aggravated assault but would net me maybe 3-5 years in prison.
While I agree the damage to the copyright holder is more egregious, prison is not the answer. If you want to deter the behavior you take out the benefit. Fines work for this behavior. Remember the prison system can not hold the current criminals; all we are doing is creating laws to create new criminality that requires incarceration.
If and when we deduct portions of these individuals pay automatically, it will actually reduce the behavior. All of those people sued and who have paid are not engaging in the behavior. Of all the research I have conducted, reducing anonymity and having an actual punishment for engaging in the behavior works.
One research project I worked on involved sending letters to random college students regarding their "perceived" engagement in copyright infringement. We then monitored their internet usage. 66% of those students bandwidth usage was reduced by half.
I see "draconian" a lot in the comments (Score:5, Interesting)
Granted, it's a little nuts, but think about it -- some kid starts seeing a PSA on TV and reading online hearing about other kids getting threatened with 3 years max. for violating the law? Shit -- if I were a parent, I'd think "family" in terms of this law, 'cause spending money to defend my kid for something he probably shouldn't have been doing in the first place affects my fucking "family" financially.
Personally, it sounds like a horseshit law in the works, but most of the ones coming from DC these days are horseshit. However, as a deterrant, 3 years for, say, my kid violating the law is plenty effective.
IronChefMorimoto
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems the bastards cannot legally check my non-shared directories without physically taking my machine away, but they can easily see and record what I share.
File swapping = life? (Score:3, Interesting)
Axe murderer: What are you in for?
File swapper: I shared a master copy of Britney Spear's newest cd before it was released.
Axe murderer: The Villainy!
Pirate Hatch strikes again. (Score:3, Interesting)
An excert:
(a) Prohibited Acts- Section 506(a) of title 17, United States Code, is amended to read as follows:
`(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.
`(2) EVIDENCE- For purposes of this subsection, evidence of reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work, by itself, shall not be sufficient to establish willful infringement of a copyright.
`(3) DEFINITION- In this subsection, the term `work being prepared for commercial distribution' means--
`(A) a computer program, a musical work, a motion picture or other audiovisual work, or a sound recording, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution--
`(i) the copyright owner has a reasonable expectation of commercial distribution; and
`(ii) the copies or phonorecords of the work have not been commercially distributed; or
`(B) a motion picture, if, at the time of unauthorized distribution, the motion picture--
`(i) has been made available for viewing in a motion picture exhibition facility; and
`(ii) 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.'.
Am I a criminal? (Score:3, Interesting)
A literal reading of this would say that some music files that I and a few friends made and put online are going to become illegal. Consider:
1) The files are copyrighted by default (by us).
2) We haven't released these files commercially.
3) The files are online, on my web site.
Are they really making it illegal for people to put their own files online without first releasing them commercially?
This sounds like they're basically outlawing the act of giving things out for free. You can only sell things; you can't give your own things away as a present.
I suppose this wouldn't be surprising, coming from the Bush administration.
I've also put a number of small scripts online, for the benefit of anyone who might find them useful. They're too small to sell. They must be copyrighted since in the US, everything is copyrighted by default. So it sounds like those giving out those little scripts is soon to be an illegal act.
I wonder what the chances are that the courts would toss this law?
WAR on Viruses (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words: How do you know the files in my shared folder weren't put there by hackers who exploited yet another vulnerability in Microsoft Windows? (remember the case of the planted warez [slashdot.org] in Sweden?)
Congressmen's kids and grandkids go to jail (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)
To fix this loophole they would have to prosecute the ones that they can prove weren't infected with anything and just did it to themselves to get away.
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:3, Interesting)
Thats what happens when they release 'garbage' and inflate the prices. You get a real parinoid executive that fears the failings of what hi is responsible for is his fault and try to place the blame on others.
I'm with ya on the doing it because your tired of being treated like you do it already. It appears that others are thinking the same. I'm not sure if it would change anyhting though. I'm reminded of smoking my first joint. I only did it becasue everyone was telling me not to. At home, school and church, all i heard was don't do it so i had to try it and see what all the fuss was about. I guess this is simular to that and people will start doing it the mor they are told they can't.
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
I prefer fixed terms of no more than 56 years in length (preferably shorter, maybe around 20 years). Why?
Life+5 years gives $BigPublishingCompany or $BigFilmCompany large incentives to see that Stephen King (or any other big-selling author) has an unfortunate "accident". Five years later, they no longer have to pay his estate any royalties on his works.
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:2, Interesting)
WTF are you talking about? What does his house keys has to do with digital information? If you want to make comparisons, think digital information as an apple tree that has an infinite supply of apples.
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:4, Interesting)
War (Score:3, Interesting)
As an alternative, I propose that we redirect our energy into mercilessly punishing people who victimize other people, and let the rest slide.
We should have a war on terrorists, gangsters, and crooks.
-Peter
Copyright = Distribution, != Commercialization (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't matter. Copyright is the right to distribute. Commercialization is something completely separate. In other words, it doesn't matter if I'm going to give it away for free, or for profit, or even at all, if I hold the copyright of a work, you have no right to distribute the work whatsoever unless you have my permission.
Re:Draconian? (Score:2, Interesting)
You are showing that you have faith in their doing their jobs well. They have proven that they cannot do that.
They should not be permitted to put the issues that paper persons have above those of flesh and blood ones.
Orwell was wrong ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Its a crime to be human in america (Score:3, Interesting)
Pretty much but the attempt is usually to make it sound more innocuous than that. Further, while it affects countries like Costa Rica, it also affects much larger economies like Canada and Australia. But I'm not going to spell it out -- it is well discussed elsewhere. The US is a net exporter of demostic policies through various international organizations and bodies.
Yet, my outrage should be tempered: it is not the US, per se, but the multi-national corporations and the minions they own who do their bidding that deserve my scorn. Really, I'm just disheartened. Historically, *only* and I mean *only* the US could have stood up against represive forces like this. For a good portion of my life I really believed that America fought the good fight. Now, it feels like there is no one left to do it.
Unintended consequences of a stupid bill (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:3, Interesting)
This is one of the big problems I have with these sorts of laws. You seem to face a smaller penalty for going into a store and actually stealing the CDs or DVDs.
Is that what we really want to teach people to do?
all the best,
drew
Why watch? (Score:2, Interesting)
Grow a pair, eat a sammich, and don't give The Racket your piece of mindshare.
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it's been held that a similar arrangement for patent royalties is unlawful, since it tries to be equivalent to an unlimited duration patent. I don't recall a copyright case to the same effect, but the argument wouldn't be hard to make. Royalties basically stop at the end of the term.
All that said, I'm not sure that "5 years after author's death" is the best choice. Just because you create a creative work doesn't guarantee you profits for life. You want income, you need to keep producing. How about 20 years from the date of publication? I think that's pretty generous.
I agree, but I think there should be more granularity. After all, some works are only of commercial viability very briefly, while others could use a longer span of time.
So I think copyright should last 5 years from publication (where publication is more broadly defined than it is now), and be renewable four times. Renewing it would have to occur in the final year of the preceeding term, and increasing fees would accompany it, so that people wouldn't sit on works merely to deprive the public domain of them, but only bother to keep within copyright those works that they felt would be profitable to them. By requiring formalities to get a copyright to begin with, we also avoid the idiotic 1976 policy of copyrighting every stupid little thing automatically. Most things would be p.d., and copyright would be reserved for things where it was important to the author to seek it. This closely approximates granting copyrights only to works where it is necessary to get them to be created in the first place, since it's wasteful protection if not needed for the work to've been created. We might bar renewal terms for short-lived works such as software. Later versions might get their own derivative (or full-fledged, if a total rewrite) copyrights, but since most software doesn't remain viable for long, and since we want the public domain to have works useful to the public, and not just junk, this seems reasonable.
Re:Free Thinkers Declare War on the RIAA (Score:3, Interesting)
The purpose of copyright is to maximally benefit the public. This is done by causing as many original and derivative works to be created as possible and then to enter the public domain as rapidly as possible. Note that the creation and public domain requirements have affects on the other. Maximizing either alone is probably a bad idea.
The disposition of authors is irrelevant on its own terms -- we're only interested in them to the extent that we're trying to wring works out of them as efficiently as possible.
Kind of like how a farmer might coerce a donkey into doing useful labor by dangling a carrot in front of him. The donkey would prefer to do no work and eat all carrots. The farmer is the boss though, and wants the most work for the least carrots. He's willing to invest a little, but not so much that the donkey is no longer worth it. Authors are basically working animals.
The main problem with your post is that you are hopelessly optimistic. The vast, vast, vast majority of works created have no economic value whatsoever that derives from their copyright. The fraction of a percent of works left has some.
For that fraction, the vast, vast, vast majority of those works with any copyright-derived value at all will see all that value realized almost immediately. Basically, this second majority is just a first-to-market advantage. For example, 90% of the profit of a book will be made within the first three months or so after its initial release. This is because virtually everyone that wants it will want it asap. Even if there were no copyright law, since it would take time for competing publishers to gear up for their own printing and distribution, the first one would get well rewarded. A copyright during this first bit of time just helps. It doesn't mean that one is needed forever.
Only the teeniest, tiniest number of works has long term (i.e. over 1 year) substantial economic viability.
Authors that are in favor of long term copyrights because they think they'll actually make enough money from them to support their family during their life, and even after their death, are probably better off playing the lottery.
Frankly, if you're worried about this, don't fucking pass long copyright laws. Pass social welfare laws, and encourage people to get life insurance policies. Not only are they far more reliable (unlike the magic beans you essentially propose) but you don't have to be an author in order to take advantage of them! Everyone can do it.
Your thing is just silly. IIRC, in criticizing the lengthening of US terms from life+50 to life+70 (or 75 to 95 / 100 to 120, depending on other factors), Justice Breyer pointed out that the economic value of those extra 20 years to authors was on average 5 cents.
Copyright for long spans of time is really only useful for making authors that are likely already rich even richer. Their families -- if they have any -- are already well taken care of. The authors that are worried about their families are not going to be helped by this.
Re:Can't wait to see... (Score:3, Interesting)
But that didn't stop your morality police from passing those laws, did it?
These laws, like the drug laws will be selectively enforced and there will be an out for anyone who can afford a good lawyer.
As a geek, it frightens me that the "war on pirates" seems set to be the next "war on drugs", along with the "war on terror".
Forest from the Trees (Score:2, Interesting)
The objective here is to have a chilling effect on Internet communcations by the suppression of filesharing. Which is scarier to most people - the "3 years and a fine" part (which has never stopped people in the past) or the "may potentially be sharing" part, which has been left intentionally vague for this purpose?
As a side-effect, did anyone bother to notice that this will stifle dissenting opinions, by the very nature that you may or may not be arrested for media that "could be copyrighted", and therefore, subject you to anal probes of the non-UFO kind? Are you willing to take the chance, to put up an MP3 recording of a dissenting opinion and hope that you're not arrested, hauled off, and found innocent later, all because "it's an MP3! S/he's pirate scum! Arrest that person now!"? Hell, given the powers of PATRIOT and it's spawn, PATRIOT II, you could be considered a terrorist...which means no lawyer, indefinite detainment, torture as needed, no public notification of your detainment, etc.
Seriously, this is all about power and control of language. Orwell was right...by narrowing the discourse of discussion, one can effectively limit or stop altogether any dissenting opinion from being heard. I fully expect that arguements to the contrary will use similar tactics, i.e. I don't believe that it exists, therefore, it doesn't, despite evidence to the contrary (a popular method with the "right", and the "left" is fast learning this as well). I'm suprised as to how many people have no clue as to what happened in Germany in the mid-1930's, and how a certain despot came to power...people that I talk to (carefully, of course) seem to think that:
It can't happen here. This is the US, and by virtue alone of it being the US, it is an impossibility.
Rebuttal: this is a form of blind patriotism. It's fairly obvious to anyone of mediocre intelligence that there is no logic or proof to support this statement.
It can't happen here. This happens only in bad places, and this is a good place, so it's not possible.
Rebuttal: this is a variant of the above, but along a different line, one of social indoctrination. You've been told this from an early age, for most of your younger life, and were told to believe it or else you would fail your schooling...you'll be branded socially as "stupid", "class fool", "outcast"...but what does schooling/peer pressure have to do with this, if not for the sole purpose of ensuring a conforming view?
It can't happen here. There are laws and constitutional rights to protect people from this kind of treatment.
Rebuttal: most of those laws and rights now have very large loopholes, courtesy of the US PATRIOT act. Go read up. BTW, I fully expect the elimination of 3 of our constitutional rights within the next 10 years through carefully planned and worded ammendments...we repealed prohibition because of "popular demand", so what's to stop our congresscritters from doing the same when there's a horrible horrible terrorist attack of some sort, contrieved for the sole purpose of panicing the public [wikipedia.org] and herding...er, guidin
Re:Corporations are psychopaths? (Score:2, Interesting)
I have an argument or two to contribute
I don't believe that this argument takes into account corporations supporting corporations. Arguably the corporations doing the most evil are either supported by a monopoly (SBC) or supported by having aggregated a number of corporations under them (Nestle), thus shielding them from negative public reaction to their actions. In the case of Nestle, one may boycott the parent company, but to have any visible effect on their cash-flow one must boycott dozens upon dozens of other brands and companies that Nestle owns. This is a huge undertaking for the consumer and, if the company's holdings or corportate clients are diverse enough, it may even prove impossible; in dealing with other companies they will be indirectly dealing with Nestle.
Agreed. There must be public consensus and a wish to punish a corporation before one can even begin to consider the problem I stated above.
Thanks for sparking a genuinely interesting debate.