‘Attempted copyright violation’
p2pnet.net news:- Self-described US Top Cop Alberto Gonzales is ramping up his efforts to work for, and on behalf of, the entertainment industry.
He’s even calling for a brand new ‘crime’ – attempted copyright violation [read infringement].
“The Justice Department is pledging to get even tougher on copyright violators and other intellectual property thieves, saying it has already boosted convictions and lengthened prison sentences,’ says Broadcasting & Cable.
Attorney general says the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007 would, “hit criminals in their wallets” by boosting restitution and ensuring all ill-gotten gains are forfeited, as well as any property used to commit the crimes.
The RICO (Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organisation) Act does much the same.
No one would deny it’s wrong to misappropriate intellectual property or to infringe on copyright. However, one could very well ask if either act deserves the kind of attention they’re getting from the Bush administration which, with the music and movie cartels clearly visible in the wings, has raised copyright offences to the level of serious crime.
“TV and film piracy has been a big issue in the conversion to digital, with Justice pledging to boost the number of attorneys trained to prosecute intellectual property (IP) crimes and to encourage more international cooperation in investigations,” says the story, which also has Universal chairman Bob Wright claiming the issue is critical to be global economy.
“These crimes, as we all know, also have a direct impact on our economy, costing victims millions of dollars and, if left unchecked, diminishing entrepreneurship,” Gonzales said in announcing the bill.
According to Gonzales, some 230 specially trained federal prosecutors are presently handling IP cases.
CNET News says the new act would:
- Criminalize “attempting” to infringe copyright
- Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software
- Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations
- Allow computers to be seized more readily
- Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anticircumvention regulations
- Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America when, “CDs with “unauthorized fixations of the sounds, or sounds and images, of a live musical performance” are attempted to be imported.
Neither the Motion Picture Association of America nor the Business Software Alliance (nor any other copyright holder, such as photographers, playwrights or news organizations, for that matter) would qualify for this kind of special treatment, the story emphasises, adding:
“Still, it’s too early to tell what might happen. A similar copyright bill that [Lamar] Smith, the RIAA and the Software and Information Industry Association announced with fanfare last April never went anywhere.”
[Note: We borrowed the pic in the upper right from Buddy Stone's Flickr page.]
Also See:
Broadcasting & Cable – Gonzales Pledges To Get Tougher On Content Pirates, May 14, 2007
CNET News – Gonzales proposes new crime: ‘Attempted’ copyright infringement, May 15, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by goverment restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
May 15th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Attempted copyright violation!
isent copyright law designed to compensate holders who have had there “product”/intellectual property stolen. either you end up with a illegal copy of someones work or you do not i cant see a middle ground.
e.g if 10010011(binary) is copyrighted and you atemt to copy this but get 01011001 you have not infringed upon the copyright as you do not end up with a copy.
May 15th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Kill someone and stay in jail for maybe 20 years before parole. Steal a 99-cent MP3 and stay in jail for life (or maybe just for attempting to steal a 99-cent song). That’s the ticket!
May 15th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
It just goes to prove how the US goverment has a big problem with corruption and graft.
I mean George Bush the incompentant has bigger problems with the bullshit quagmire war in Iraq the runaway federal budget and bigger headaches with governing than being a prostitute for his pimp masters in the entertainment industryand George bush’s popularity rating of less than 30%.
The democraps are flirting about bringing the the so called “fairness doctrine” back.
The country lives in truly perilous times which is on the brink of all out war in the middle east and terrorism i would think there are more things to trip on than more totally unenforcable bullshit intellectual property laws .
This website does not even live in reality.
This website must be for the most part is for younger people who have nothing better to do than to steal copyrighted material off the internet and then claim they are in the right and they don’t have to pay the entertainment cartels restitution for the property that they stole
May 15th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Yes, and from RIAA’s recent track record, yuo don’t even need to attempt to steal a song, all you need to do is have an internet account to be sentenced for life.
It’s idiots like this, which make me glad as a US citizen, I don’t live there now, and seriously don’t want my children to be faced with people who can’t follow their own rules.
This somehow reminds me of some governments in the past, who with similar rediculous ideas, thought that they could rule the world by completly stripping the citizens of their rights, because the “government leaders know best” (I wont name any names, because there are too many). In fact one such government ended up with these exact leaders fleeing their gold covered mansions, only to be shot, and thrown into an unmarked grave.
As a writer and ex-editor for magazines, I truely apreciate the need to respect the works for others. I have also seen, first hand, what can happen when copyrights are ignored.
And as sad as it is, the US movie industry has also played a major role in the reproduction of foriegn matirial to suit their own needs (Disney is well known for their stealing of other people’s ideas). And to top that off, there are reports that a large number movies release over the net, are from industry insiders.
So it all comes down to this one point-
With it said that the US was built on the premise that it is the land of the free, where do these people get off telling us what we do in a personal, and non-corperate life?
just my two cents…
May 15th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
Time for a candidate from an alternative party to win the White House. I hope the candidate is from the Constitution Party.
May 16th, 2007 at 4:54 am
I’ve just realised why the xxAA’s are constantly pushing for copyright infringement to be made a criminal matter instead of being a civil matter.
At the moment they have to pay for lawsuits, even if its just for their own lawyers and barristers and other court costs.
If copyright infringement was a criminal matter, governments would have to pay all the legal costs involved.
It’s obviously just an attempt to cut their costs regardless of the consequences to anyone other than themselves.
May 16th, 2007 at 11:50 am
“Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software.”
I’m glad i’m not living in the police state that is America.
May 16th, 2007 at 11:57 am
I was under the fallacious impression that government is there to serve the needs of the general public, not big business. Obviously things must work differently in the USA.
May 16th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
When government no longer serves the needs of the populous, they shall be supplanted.
May 16th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
Repeating binary patterns can not be copyrighted. You only have to compress an audio file or encode it in a different format, then you have a completely new pattern set.
It’s like trying to copyright a spoken language. Copyrights and patents should be abolished, they only serve the interests of big business.
May 16th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Welcome to the police state!!
This will reach flash point where civil revolution is an inevitability.
May 16th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Could it also be because the US Government realizes that we now are in a trade deficit crisis due to all REAL jobs going overseas and the entertainment industry has talked the government into believing that we can save our economy by having US citizens pay for every song and movie they watch. The funny thing is that there is no way this industry will grow enough to give all those people who lost their jobs a decent career. The whole idea this proposed law is based on is a red herring just like the 9/11 privacy abuses that still continue to take place to this day. Someone in another post said that it is time to revolt. Another mentioned that when the government no longer serves its people it gets replaced. It’s corporate corruption and the corruption of our representatives (ie. Feinstein) that have led us here. If only there as a way to clean the houses of these crooks who get paid by the content industry to inact these laws against the will of the many. These are self-serving interests period. Also, Gonzolez should be asked to resign or should just step down because he doesn’t know law from a hole in the wall. He thinks AG means he can make crap up as he goes along. Needless to say, I’m very upset over this… Next thing you know, your 13 year old kid will be locked up in jail because they were caught sharing a Britney Spears album. Give me a break!
May 17th, 2007 at 4:38 am
all i hear about are this and that about sharing music on p2p, however since they monitor ips, they ought to get those of child molesters, and why aren’t they going to jail, is it now that the child molesters are now free to molest while music sharers go to jail for life.. This all they care about, heck i’ve seen more molesters on p2p then ever and again all i hear about is how much they sue, sue and jail and jail a music sharer while the molesters get to go free…
What i mean is that if 20,000 + music sharers get letters of so called copyright infringement but there are 10,000 + children p0rn molesters on p2p and not one has ever got a letter from the police or snail mail, or like only 1 or 2 have ever gotten caught. Is this not to assume that riaa aznd mpiaa just don’t care about this kind of stuff….. if the riaa wins totally, and they control everything, i wouldn’t trust them with a child at all, heck maybe if a molester pays them 1,000 dollars to molest the riaa’s children which do they choose the money or the child, (children.). oh and he doesn’t steal their music of course or what they claim as stealing…
Heck it seems like that, and that killers and robbers and those in jail for truly awful bad things have actually obeyed the law to a better extent than those that are not in jail..
May 17th, 2007 at 4:43 am
That’s actually a misunderstanding. Life sentences only occur if the counterfeit product in question causes loss of life.
May 17th, 2007 at 4:45 am
So I assume you have a replacement method of compensation, then?