Piracy Deterrence and Education Act Introduced

Bootsy Collins writes "Last Thursday in the U.S. Congress, H.R. 2517 was quietly introduced and referred to the House Judiciary Committee. The bill, authored by Lamar Smith (R-TX) and co-sponsored by Howard Berman (D-CA), directs the FBI to develop methods of deterring copyright violation through use of peer-to-peer networks, including efforts to facilitate sharing information about suspected violators amongst law enforcement agencies. It also directs the Justice Department to develop programs to educate the American public on why copyright violation is bad. Berman, you may remember, introduce a bill last year that would give the RIAA and MPAA wide latitude to crack suspected violators' computers. " Update: 06/23 17:03 GMT by S : We also covered a variant of this story on Saturday.

Re:What is the program?

[no soup for you]

SERIOUSLY, the FBI has no place at all getting involved with copyright issues.

In all truth, the FBI is exactly the organization to investigate copyright violations. Remember the warnings at the beginning of movies? IP and copyright are Federal laws. The FBI enforces federal statues

disclaimer: I hate this bill and think it should not come out of committee.

Hmm...

[Phoenix823]

(5) In addition, many of the computer users drawn to the convenience of peer-to-peer systems do not realize that these systems pose serious security and privacy threats to their personal computers or company networks. Recent studies reveal that the majority of the users of these systems are unable to tell what files they are sharing and sometimes incorrectly assume they were not sharing any files when in fact they were sharing all files on their hard drive.

Of all the P2P sharing software I've ever seen, none of them had defaulted to sharing my entire hard drive. It's not the software's fault that it's user has no idea what he/she is doing.

(6) The security and privacy threats posed by peer-to-peer networks extend beyond users inadvertently enabling a hacker to access files. Millions of copies of one of the most popular peer-to-peer networks contain software that could allow an independent company to take over portions of users' computers and Internet connections and has the capacity to keep track of users' online habits.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that this is referring to KaZaA and the spyware it installs. What makes this interesting is that, given the above quote, the good representatives seem to favor non-binding EULAs.

(8) In addition, the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection of the Department of Homeland Security has the authority to act against infringements of copyrighted works, including those works protected under the Berne Convention and the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property of the World Trade Organization...

I think the Department of Father^H^H^H^H^H^HHomeland Security has more important things to worry about than worrying about people distributing copyrighted music, don't you?

Re:US cracks down on ILLEGAL activities.. so what?

[jorlando]

I think that the point is that the government is "paying" to protect assets of private companies.

Since the government don't "earn" money, so is the taxpayers money that is being diverted from one area to another area that is being said "more important" or "vital" or any other adjective.

The FBI now will start to eavesdrop and crack down on Joe Beer so he stops downloading N Sync and LOTR. Good...

Without that kind of distraction Bin Laden parked two boeings in manhatan, other at the pentagon and another didn't parked at white house or congress thanks to many courageous people that broke into the cabin.

But the entertaiment industrie is vital, canÂt afford a defense by itself (sueing peoples or companies that also have money to defend themselves, like google, not money extortion from students) and I've heard that the Show Bizz make generous contributions to politicians...

Way to go... letÂs do it right... crime and terrorists rampaging through the country while law officers run honey pots to convict downloaders...

this is exactly why

[Anonymous Coward]

copyright wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't predominantly used by corporations (who act as "people" BUT NEVER SHOULD BE CONSIDERED SO) to control their content in perpetuity.

An interesting article on why corporations are bad (mmmkay) in 2 parts:
http://www.poclad.org/articles/grossman01. html
http://www.poclad.org/articles/grossman02.ht ml

Re:Action

[aborchers]

I feel obligated to point you to another response [slashdot.org] which has led me to reconsider my initial stance. Conflation of "copyright infringement" with "theft" in the bill is worthy of notice. I believe I will ask Mr. Wexler to fix this error.

Well, apparently...

[Tjebbe]

i believe this has been covered on /. before, but the first google is this [slyck.com]

Re:Action

[hal200]

Actually, as of last year, it is. Bell, Telus and StarChoice successfully petitioned the CRTC to disallow "grey market" receivers because it was competing with their services. And so, in one fell swoop, all those hacked access cards and receivers suddenly became illegal.

Great, isn't it?