Comments on: Pirate this, go to jail

That's the mood in Congress, says CNET News.com's Washington watcher Declan McCullagh, who writes how legislators are responding to increasing pressure to do something--anything--about digital piracy.

Umm...

If I _ever_ have to ask Microsoft for _permission_ to run a program, I'll never touch a PC again.

[demonseed71]

I cant believe only one response

I cant believe how utterly contemptable our goverment is. Its laughable I can kill a human been and get fined more for pirating software. George Orwells 1984 is alive and well and people are simply bending over and letting "the man" bend them over.
Our goverment wonders bewilderdly why we have terrorists, its because colledge kids are getting sued for 9.5 billion for copying 10 gigs of music and getting *ticked off. Doing stuff like this will only increase terrorism and anti goverment resentment. Why cant anyone in congress see how utterly contemptable and anti educational pro piracy is. plus with all the amount of competition using media and its ease of developement, your shooting yourself in the foot by copy protecting your stuff. people get famous by being popular, whether its bad advertising, good advertising or word of mouth, if you limit your products availability it will not increase your revenue with copy protection. All this does is an attempt by a few corporations to controll mass distrubution in some vain attempt. give up people. we cant stop drugs and guns, your certainly not going to stop copying software, music or films. the only thing contemptable going on is the worship of greed and the laughable attempts to attain wealth. petty materialism and materialists have sucked the soul from this country and will drive it into the ground.

[Anysia]

Anti Fair use disguised at AntiPiracy

I don't own an iPod, never had, never wanted one. However, I did want a waterproof mp3 player, as I was in a hydrotherapy pool 3 times a week. I would mp3 some music from my CDs, but if there was a song I wanted I didn't have I would get it legally from iTunes, and then 'convince' it to play on a non apple device. I am not distributing it, it is mine, and I felt/feel I had the right to be able to use what I had legally purchased. One of the songs, I actually conferred with the lead singer of the band, asking his permission to 'convince' the legally purchased from iTunes song, and he said "Whatever it takes for you to listen, go for it." Straight from the artist. But with this proposed bill, if convicted, I could be charged $25k and 5 yrs in jail?

How about they stop making proprietary formats so no one has to 'convince' media to play on other than one specific commercial device?