New bill backs prison time for piracy 'attempts'
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may not have a lot of pals in Congress these days, but he has nevertheless found someone willing to pursue the dramatic copyright crackdown lurking on his legislative wishlist.
Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) introduced a bill last week that appears to take its cues from controversial proposals circulated by the Justice Department chief in recent years, which include stiffer prison sentences for copyright-related crimes and creation of entirely new categories of punishable activities.
Notably, under Chabot's bill, called the Intellectual Property Enhanced Criminal Enforcement Act of 2007, it would be a crime not only to commit copyright infringement but also to "attempt" to do so. Such an offense would carry the same penalties as actually committing infringement--as would engaging in a "conspiracy" with two or more people to carry it out.
The bill would also double the prison sentences currently prescribed for copyright infringement violations, bringing them up to a range of 6 to 20 years.
Life behind bars would also be within the realm of possibility. Trafficking in counterfeit goods and services--including, for example, a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it--could carry that hefty prison term "if the offender knowingly or recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" through his or her conduct, according to the bill.
The bill also grafts additional penalties onto the thorny Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which dictates it's unlawful to sidestep copyright protection technologies except in certain circumstances. Right now, violating those rules can land you up to 10 years behind bars and as much as $1 million in fines, but Chabot's bill would also require the criminal to forfeit any property used in any manner to commit the offense--or anything garnered directly or indirectly from the proceeds of the activity. (The same forfeiture obligations would also apply to a wide array of other copyright-related offenses.)
Digital rights activists are already bristling at the new language, which currently has no co-sponsors. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, for instance, has argued that the bill and similar past efforts would lead to more convictions of innocent people. In a recent blog post, EFF activism coordinator said he hopes the Chabot proposal "meets the same fate as last year's DoJ proposal and is stopped dead in its tracks."
The Recording Industry Association of America declined to comment. A Motion Picture Industry Association of America spokeswoman praised the effort, adding, "Enforcement is a critical part of overall intellectual property protection."
A relatively new Washington-based group called the Copyright Alliance, which counts both of the entertainment industry groups and a number of others among its membership, also applauded the bill's introduction. Executive director Patrick Ross said in a statement that Chabot "is to be commended for his effort to strengthen enforcement of creators' rights, such as increased resources for law enforcement and the reduction of international trafficking in pirated goods."
Whether the Republican-backed bill will go anywhere in a Democratic Congress already hostile to the attorney general is always wild card.
But now that consideration of an all-consuming patent law overhaul bill is mostly out of his hands, the Hollywood-friendly chairman of a House intellectual property subcommittee, Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), may have more time to revisit the wishes of his politically powerful constituents. (Chabot also sits on that subcommittee.) The Copyright Alliance's Ross predicted that the Chabot bill would likely be just the first of several legislative attempts to deter piracy.
What about studios that stole an idea for a movie? "Coming to America" was jacked from the late Art Buchwald. What would the settlement have looked like if Eddie Murphy could have spent a year in jail over such a piece of crap as that one?
Then, of course, there's the whole "stiffling innovation" argument: with the threat of something "new" possibly being something "borrowed" who would bother inventing anymore?
The only people who would ever make out like gangbusters are the lawyers - the higher the possible penalty the greater the legal fees.
It would take an army of lawyers to tell the difference between "Attempted piracy" from "Honest Mistake". Though I still maintian my right and that MS trampled all over it.
Maybe they should kick in prison time for media execs any time the DCMA is abused. That would balance it out nicely. "If you can prove it was attempted piracy, they go to jail, but if the attempt turns out to be inadvertant, accidental, unintensional, or legitimate, you go to jail instead."
Does anyone else see how crazy our government has become? How completely clueless our "representatives" are? I am moving to Canada. That's all there is to it. Yes, Canada has it's own problems but that cannot possibly be worse than moronic crap like this.
So, what we have is the compilation of laws on top of laws that has grown for the past 200 years. If there is a particular "hot topic", law makers go in and try to patch and existing piece of law. It just gets uglier.
Worse, more and more laws get created. In this land that is supposed to stand for freedom, we are choking ourselves with laws. There are very few freedoms left in America. Having traveled all over the world, I cannot say that other countries are better, but we definitely do not stand above others in terms of personal freedom, that's for sure. But, we should.
Can somebody in Washington explain what is wrong with the current copyright laws? Is it illegal to copy movies? Yes. Are we punishing those who do it? Hmmm? Perhaps not very much. Rather than enforcing existing laws, it seems our government wants to create life sentences for the crimes that are already crimes and then hope to scare people to death. This kind of social control reminds me of terrible communist countries (and some dictatorships) from which America was supposed to be so different.
Paul
mmmm prison sponsorships! now there's a way to help out those underfunded prisons. The Running Man revisited.
DC is infested with ********, and they stink.
protection on computer games (and seize their assets of course).
These kind of trouble makers are too smart for their own good.
They would only turn into a bunch of high-income smarty pants
running around telling the rest of us what to do. Off with their
heads!
Keeping the execution option open is cost-effective too. The
RIAA, a law unto themselves, could just line up the accused
against a wall and shoot them. No messy trials, appeals, or jails.
And this would send a great "getting tough on crime" message
that any politician would love to embrace at election time!
Talk about a police state. What has happened to this country? These politicians have gone nuts.
begin tomorrow.
Just do a total boycott of copyrighted software, and don't use anything that is not open sourced, freeware, public domain, or another non-commercial license.
respect game makers. No sense in destroying
their hard work (gotta play, after all!) I
*have* XP on my computer, haven't touched it
since before the animated cursor problem
appeared. I use OO.o for all my work (looking at
KOffice), use Konqueror (faster than Firefox)
and AmaroK for music! Viva la Revolution! Viva
Linux! For myself, Viva Kubuntu! (You may beg to
differ, it works very well for me. I like apt. I
might try openSuSE or Fedora, but for now...)
If it were up to my I would put an age limit on politics. 65 and you're retired, period. WE NEED YOUNG PEOPLE ARE MORE OPEN, UNDERSTANDING, KNOW TECHNOLOGY GOVERNING THIS COUNTRY! NOT A BUNCH OF OLD FARTH THAT CAN'T EVEN WORK A CALCULATOR ON THEIR OWN!
YOU put the retards in office and you brought this upon yourself. make sure you elect them in the next round so they can imprison you for "copyright violations" b/c you looked at the store window and a tv which had copyrighted material you were not licensed to view!
I blame you as much as those retards passing these laws that are taking every last shred of our constitution and our rights!
put in jail longer for copyright infringement than for rape. Kind of
shows where our politicians priorities are. Where do these idiots
come from?
Why not stop buying media and software for 6 months and try to get your friends and relatives to do the same.
Face it, politicians are in the back pocket of Hollywood and Nashville, so if you dont hit them where it hurts, all the complaining in the world wont get their attention.
As for the frase, the best things in life are free, for sure Linux does justice to it.
If this kind of crap is allowed to continue, they won't be scifi too much longer. They will be prophetic.
You can get all the plastic parts you could ever want to cure you of your fast food fixation symptoms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dystopian_novels
While I don't mind punishment for the profiteer of piracy goods, this take it a step too far. Maybe we should jail the 7 years old girls for attempt to download a song. Where are the politicians who would actually listen to the people voted them in?
Get a life! I bought it through retail stores and I can put it on any device I own PERIOD!
"I can buy music and or rip music from my CD i bought and
place it on my IPOD but I am not allowed to rip movies?
Get a life! I bought it through retail stores and I can put it on any
device I own PERIOD!"
WRONG!! All you did was give money to a bunch of lazy
executives. It bought you no rights whatsoever, either to protect
your investment (copy) nor to even view the material. Best to
burn the disk now to prevent temptation, unless you like the
idea of life in prison. While you're at it, why not give more
money to the lazy executives who want to imprison you? If you
don't, you could be held accountable for the fact that the word
"copy" crossed your mind at some point between the giving of
money and the destruction of evidence - oh yeah, burning the
disk is destroying evidence, leading to more charges and more
prison time.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic here. Or am I?
I haven't bought either a CD or a DVD in years and I don't plan
on starting now. Besides, as has been mentioned already, most
of the stuff on disks now is total crap and not worth either the
money they're asking or the prison time they want to impose on
us. Screw them (MPAA and RIAA both).
- RIAA & MPAA double dipping in my wallet.
- by inachu July 31, 2007 7:22 AM PDT
- I should not have to pay twice to get a movie I bought lets say at Best Buy or Safeway and watch it on my dvd player then pay again to rip it to my ipod or PSP.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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- Exactly
- by ColdMast July 31, 2007 8:27 AM PDT
- I think if the RIAA keeps taking away my media rights, I'll just switch to books.
- Like this
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(36 Comments)The future license agreement of any media by held by consumers will read, "By purchasing this media you agree you are not allowed to watch/listen to it in your own home on any device."