File sharers – 10 years in jail
p2p news view / p2pnet: Ed Felton recently pointed out that under the proposed extensions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (or DMCA 2.0 as it is becoming known as), non-commercial copyright infringement such as file sharing would carry a bigger penalty than manslaughter – up to ten years in the big house.
Compared to the average sentence for manslaughter (33 months in jail), one really does have to wonder if Lamar Smith has actually thought about his proposed bill, or if the rush of campaign contributions from Hollywood has gone to his head, because under the DMCA 2.0, you’d be better off going old school and just stealing CDs from Wal-Mart.
That’s larceny and will get you a whopping 8.3 months in jail if the Wal-Mart rent-a-cops catch you on the way out.
The same goes for the increased anti-circumvention provisions that are on the table. DMCA 2.0 would make it illegal to simply have anti-circumvention tools in your possession with intent to distribute them, and it’s easy to imagine a federal prosecutor arguing an internet connection serves as proof that an unlucky researcher was planning to share their 133t h4xor tools with the world.
I can see the headlines now: “File sharing Down 2%, Petty Theft up 862%”, followed closely by “IP Laws Backfire On U.S., Smart Yanks Flee Country”.
So what happens if you can’t be bothered cracking it yourself and just go find the guy who designed the copy protection and point a shotgun at him until he posts the source code online? Well, that would add up to about 20 years. So you’d be better off just sending anonymous threats about his family – that’s only worth about seven years on average, and it’d be easier to argue you weren’t actually serious about the whole thing if you were to be caught.
Even if you did get sent down for it, you’d still come in three years under sentences being handed out to geeky researchers.
And Hey! If you only get five months inside for telling eBay’s ceo you’re going to “haunt and hurt you and your family,” I’m sure there will be some one out there willing to sacrifice themselves so that everyone can enjoy unencrypted HD movies.
Or more likely, someone driven to insanity by overly restrictive DRM (and I understand “temporary insanity” goes down well with the judge). Just. Copy. Damn. Thing. To. Ipod. Ahhhhhh!
It’s also easy to imagine a scenario where the author of a virus and the guy who develops a patch for it end up sharing the same cell. All the virus writer would need to do is include some rudimentary encryption in his code to ensure no anti-virus researcher would be keen to write a fix if the only way to do so would be to crack the encryption.
I wonder how many anti-virus providers would be ready to step up and fight this in court? I wonder how many of their employees would agree to work on a fix in the first place, considering they themselves would be in the dock facing a federal prison sentence?
Perhaps Lamar Smith believes some intellectual property is more worthy of protection than other intellectual property? If intellectual property is an absolute right, as some misguided people seem to think it is, we should remind them that an individual’s rights don’t suddenly disappear when they break the law. (Well, Guantanamo Bay aside, an individual’s rights don’t suddenly disappear when they break the law).
The author of an annoying, but harmless, mass mailing worm should get the same protection for their work as anyone else. Right?
What if the worm was genuinely written to explore and evaluate security holes, like to find out how many copies of a dodgy mail server are in operation? A very black hat way of going about things, but the intention behind the act may be as worthy as the corporate anti-virus researchers (and also the most practical way of fixing the problem if your warnings about security holes have been ignored previously).
Pfft! Who cares? Let the courts figure it out. They’re the ones who’re experienced in dealing with ill-conceived laws after they’ve been passed.
It seems that the entertainment cartel’s men in Washington have gotten a little carried away with protecting their interests online ’cause if the DMCA 2.0 passes, you be better off giving up p2p and taking a full time job as a heroin dealer – you’d actually be able to afford the CDs AND good lawyers then.
Alex H, p2pnet – Sydney, Australia
[Alex is an operations manager for an ATM (automatic teller machine) supplier and he specialises in infrastructure development and maintenance, and logistics. He's also an[other] active member of the Shareaza community. He also runs the Tech Loves Art blog on which you’ll find previous p2pnet posts as well as other good stuff.]
April 27th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Ah! Yes, the november elections will be our way of clearing out corrupt politicians.
April 27th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
heroin is probably some companys intellectual property. cutting it may be considered circumvention.
April 27th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
The more one reads about the Gestapo mentality of legislators in “democratic” America the sicker one gets.
So a kid download a song and he can get years in the slam?
This is a true story:
A music publisher from New York, acting as a typical American music publisher, fraudulently convinced the widow of my father that when a songwriter dies the music belongs to the widow (a legal lie), while propoposing that she, the “owner” assign the rights to my father’s song to them. Thi was 8 years ago. My father wrote over 700 songs and all were stolen through the scam I just described. The widow, when cought, sued my siblings and I, the real owners. She lost and the courts decided we are the rel owners.
In 1999 we went to the FBI to report the theft. They told me they were too busy with terrorism, as the Cole ship had been bombed in those days.
The we went to the loscal police who said that no theft took place.
Then in 2000 we weny to the local Justice Department. They also said no theft took place.
Then I went to the local Ombudsman. They also said no theft took place.
The we sued in the American court. The judge did not even mention the theft in his judgement and gaves us a damage award of just $16,000 even thought the music publisher had collected illegally about $1,000,000 in royalties (present worth). We spent over 70,000 in legal expenses and the publisher now claims they are broke and cannot pay even the absurd $16,000 sentence.
Then we went to the Boston Appeals court. They did not mention any theft in their decisions agains us.
Then we went again to our local Justice Department. After a year they have not completed their second investigation. The first one, 4 years earlier, took about 1/2 hour.
Now, can anyone figure this out? Real theft is tolerated by everyone reponsible for justice but some whacko legislator wants to send kid to jail for doing what has always been done by everyone, sharing and copying music.
Maybe the whacko legislator should study our case, the Venegas music case, to see what has gone wrong with copyright law, totally disregarded by music publishers and judges and law enforcement agencies while kids and their parents and everyone elses are threatenned with severe, maslaughter and property theft level jail sentences.
Rep. Lamar Smith is a sick person. Too bad for the people he will screw, the Americans.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
April 27th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
So the new politicians can start accepting the bribe money that the old ones were getting. To quote The Who; “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…”
April 27th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
As much as hollywood would have you believe the two are analogous, this is simply incorrect. Richard Stallman elegantly illustrates this in the GPL and related documentation.
April 27th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Other artists are starting a movement to boycott artists that support RIAA actions.
Along with this is my idea for the audience to fall silent all summer long on the 3rd tune in a concert so these artists and their controlling companies get the message.
Stay free. Silent on three. Keep P2P.
Are they attacking on behalf of the artist or on behalf of their own profits. If they are all in the same then they will fail. Their fans will only be numb brains awaiting instruction to think.
April 28th, 2006 at 12:46 am
Civic Duty FTW!
Contact your representatives. Tell everyone to do the same. Hopefully, they will get the message from someone other than industry lobby groups.
April 28th, 2006 at 3:51 am
Not if Diebold & the electronic voting mschine companies haev their way!!!!!
April 28th, 2006 at 5:30 am
But if you cut it, arent you creating a derivative work? Also if someone has already patented the process of cutting it, you could be in real trouble.
April 29th, 2006 at 1:20 am
Entertainment industry lobbyists are even worse than tobacco company lobbyists!
Smith vs. Naylon, anyone?
This reminds me of a Discovery Channel special called “Conspiracy of Silence” (never aired)
If you want to download it, chhose your tracker:
Piratebay: http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3412908
Demonoid: http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/246285/
HTTP link promised when I feel like installing a webserver
May 1st, 2006 at 10:07 pm
Dear Honorable Lmar Smith:
As an honorable man I ask you, what are you going to do with patenet infringers? As a smart man you must know that most patent infringers do infringe to make money and profit off someonelse’s patents. This is cntrary to everyday sharing of music, that if done is not to make money or profit.
Sometimes the infringeent is because of ignorance but American lawyers and judges always (stupidly if you ask me) repeat “ignorance is no excuse” when referring to the infringement of kids,
But you do not care about patent infringement by large corporations. There are no jail terms for these. At least I have never heard of a patent holder feeling threatened with jail for infringing a patent. I have also never heard of a product with an FBI warnig for patent infringement like the ones on DVDs for copyright infringement. Have you?
I have also never hear of the Justice Department ceracking down on pateent infringement or setting up a unit to investigate corporate patent infringement. Have yoy?
Do you have an answer to this apparent disparity and discrimination against the people and legislative and judicial favoritsm to corporate (patent) infringers?
What do you have to say for yourself?. Are you not ashamed?
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com