p2pnet - rss feed: Fight the Copycrime Proposal
p2pnet.net news:- With the entertainment cartels paving the way, America is slowly becoming a corporate police state.
Should ordinary Americans face jail time for attempted copyright infringement? - asks the EFF’s (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Deep Links.
Should the sort of property forfeiture penalties applied in drug busts also threaten p2p users, mixtape makers, and mash-up artists?
The Department of Justice (DoJ) says Yes to this has drafted [PDF], “an outrageous legislative proposal that applies these severe penalties and much more,” says the foundation. Take action now to stop it >>>>>>>>>
Criminal copyright infringement already goes beyond situations involving large-scale commercial piracy. Thanks to laws like the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act and the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act (FECA), the federal government can now criminally charge (i.e., send to prison) people for simply uploading a single “pre-release” song (as two Ryan Adams fans discovered last year when they were brought up on federal charges for uploading tracks from pre-release promotional CDs).
Most of the DoJ’s proposed changes to copyright’s criminal provisions fall into two categories: (1) making it easier to convict people by eliminating the inconvenient necessity of proving that actual infringement took place, and (2) increasing the financial and confinement punishments. Law enforcement would also be allowed to use wiretaps and to spy on personal communications as part of copyright investigations. That potentially translates into wiretap authority for millions of American homes, since surveys show that 1 in 5 American Internet users downloads music and movies from P2P networks.
This guarantees one result: more costly, unnecessary, and draconian investigations and prosecutions funded by taxpayer dollars. Not only will this end up costing Americans tremendous amounts of time, money, and peace of mind, but it will also give law enforcement yet another opportunity to invade your privacy. All it takes is a single attempt to download the wrong file online.
Law enforcement already has enough tools to go after commercial pirates, and the entertainment industry has the tools to pay its own lawyers to sue infringers. Instead of wasting taxpayer dollars, Congress ought to be focusing on meaningful copyright reform that protects fans’ rights to use creative material and supports new technologies.
Also See:
Deep Links - Action Alert: Fight the Justice Department’s Copycrime Proposal!, May 22, 2007
f your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the 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 24th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
This is fascist legislation in attempt to make criminals out of ordinary Americans on behalf of the FASCIST RIAA and MPAA. This is the RIAA and MPAA decalring a war against American public. It is 2004 all over again. In late 2004, it nearly passed and just barely failed to pass at the last second in late November.
People better wake up and write to their congress people, spread the word, sign petitions opposing it and thus do everything they can to ensure a repeat of this fascist legislative attempts that nearly succeeded in 2004 doesn’t happen again!!!!
Scary as hell indeed!!!
May 24th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
The real fascists are the government. After all, they introduce legislation, not the *AA. Yes they lobby, but they don’t put the bills forward/vote.
Don’t blame the *AA, blame your government/politicians for allowing it to happen, and in most cases promoting it. The *AA are simply doing what ever they can get away with, and when the government is concerned, they offer little in the way of opposition.
May 25th, 2007 at 11:36 am
They are both fascists. The RIAA and MPAA pay the politicians money and bribe them to pass these bills.
At the same time, the government is corrupt for allowing it to happen and some of the officials even supporting it.
Blame them both!!
But you are right that the governemtn should be more to blame because the governemtn is supposed to be for the people and they don’t have to do what the RIAA and MPAA says.
A good governemtn for the people by the people would tell the RIAA and MPAA to fuck off.
May 25th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
“Should ordinary Americans face jail time for attempted copyright infringement?”
No, but high level government officers with access to all the legal advise they need, that claim copyrights over public domain works, a type of copyright infringement, should. For details see current related stories here on p2pnet about how the Smithsonian claims copyrights over public domain copyrights.
Some jail time to legislators that routinely photocopy, without the proper authorization by the magazine, magazine articleswhere they appear (something they do all the time), would also be appropiate.