Jail time for California file swappers?

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law Tuesday establishing fines and potential jail time for anonymous file swappers. The new law says that any California resident who sends copyrighted works without permission to at least 10 other people must include his or her e-mail address and the title of the work. Swappers who do not include this information will face fines of up to $2,500 and up to one year in prison.

Minors can be fined up to $250 for their first two offenses, and a minor's third offense can bring a $1,000 fine and a year in county jail. The law provides exemptions for people sending works to immediate family members and for the transmission of works inside a home network.

mail.ru is good place to create such email accounts.

I am not sure how they are going to enforce the law with off-shore email accounts.

Californica where movie start become govoners

I've got to get out of the place. Amerika is becoming the laughing stock of the world. We need to get back to the roots. Our fore fathers are turning over in their graves.

Innovation and invention will belong to the rest of the world while we are stifled by corporate greed and government corruption and mediocrity.

The turn-over has begun. I'm moving.

Bye-

[unknown unknown]

Another BS law brought to us by the idiots in government.

I think they're going to find this law is going to be pretty hard to enforce. Cause people can put other names and email address besides their own. This law won't stand up to a court challenge. I guess it's no surprise that Arnold has his lips firmly planted Hollywood's collective ass.

[vanborine]

Arnold Shame on you...stick to buisness!

File sharing on the net is world wide...mind your own buisness and continue to help the poor people of your state not your rich buddys!!

Whatever next?

Perhaps the death penalty if the song that is shared is in the Top 40.

Impeach that FOOL...

Ahnold sucks for bowing to the MAN. My long time movie hero is no more.

these laws are 100% pointless

As a Libertarian, i have great respect for private property and consider it the foundation of our free society. That said, as an IT professional, i realize that a) no encryption scheme will work if someone can redirect the output of their speaker/TV leads to a recording device; b) technology is rapidly developing to the point where it will be impossible to block transmission of information from points A to B; and c) bandwidth limitations will soon cease to be a factor.

Given these realities, there is no way that intellectual property sharing can be eliminated without also eliminating most of the economic benefits of the internet. Therefore, in a short period of time our current model for intellectual production will become invalid and unless we make radical reforms in our system intellectual production will break down, and we will be overtaken by totalitarian socialist states such as China which do not have our problem.