Bush Signs Law Targeting P2P Pirates 727
BlakeCaldwell writes "CNet is reporting that President Bush signed into law the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act (previously-reported).
A lawbreaker can land in jail for up to three years for distributing a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet. The MPAA's president Dan Glickman applauded the move, stating he wanted to 'thank the congressional sponsors of this legislation for their strong advocacy for intellectual property rights.'"
Not that bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Straight from the EFF [eff.org]'s Fred von Lohmann:...And the bottom line from the EFF:
Oh he thanked them alright. (Score:2, Insightful)
And they would like to thank the MPAA for their contribution.
the word sponsor just leaves a bad taste.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I just can't understand how "buying" laws is considered perfectly natural and good legislation... (I know that's not exactly the context the word was used in, but still)
Re:Ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not that bad... (Score:3, Insightful)
To say this bill could be a whole lot worse doesn't make it a good bill. Duh!
American Law, got to love it (Score:4, Insightful)
In the meantime lets let convicted murders get out on "good behavior" so they can get another shot and killing someone else.
Lets send rapests to see a shrink who can claim they are now safe for the world again.
Lets focus on every stupid little thing that happens EXCEPT the things that harm and affect us the most!!!
Cause gosh darn it I don't ever want to walk pass some "Axis of Evil" P2P criminal on the streets, the pure inhumanity of it all.
Re:Not that bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
The rest... of the story. (Score:3, Insightful)
Glickman later added that he would like to apologize to those same congressional sponsors, as their seven figure checks will be delayed for up to two days.
Re:Not that bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not just Americans (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not that bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet after 229 years of lobbying Congress the flesh and blood people of this fine country and losing their rights sliver by sliver to those "people" created out of paper and ink.
lets get drunk and drive... (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to MegaCorp, where we make the rules, and frankly, human life is far less important than our profits.
Re:Not that bad... (Score:0, Insightful)
Really says a lot for your "values" when they appear to consist of "But he did it first!"
Re:Funny that they stress "Family Entertainment". (Score:1, Insightful)
Once again, another day another bill signed for big business. Hell, in 5 years Bush Jr has yet to veto a single bill, and why would he? In order to veto something, a bill sponsored by a Democrat would have to pass the house.
What A Cheap Shot (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, Zonk, can you cite anybody in the Administration who has said that enforcement of IP laws is part of the War on Terror?
No, I didn't think so. So why the cheap shot connecting the two? It's funny how slashbots talk out of both sides of their mouths, that the technology shouldn't be procescuted, it should be the violators. Now the violators are being targeted, you guys still whine about...something.
Re:Translation (Score:1, Insightful)
Translation: You're our , that's the least you could have done for us...
Re:Not that bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot Editorial Spin (Score:2, Insightful)
The original story led with a headline covering the aspects of the bill that make it explicitly legal to *filter* DVD content, certainly a positive side to this legislation for the tech industry and fair use. Apparently, that headline wasn't sexy enough, though, so they pulled the story and resubmitted it as yet another whine about the entertainment-industrial complex abusing all those poor shmoes who think they should be able to get other's creative works for free.
(Yeah, I'm editorialzing too, but I don't have Editor in my title)
Skewed Justice (Score:3, Insightful)
What scares me here is the absolute disparity (right word?) between the punishment of virtual-space crimes versus violent, sexual and other more "real" crimes.
When you see murderers/rapists/etc walk free 12 months after their committal to jail and yet people can get 3 years for file-sharing... wow, I'm disturbed.
I think it's time more people in congress suffered to violent crime.
Take a look at the whole bill... (Score:2, Insightful)
Back when DVDs first came out, this was supposedly one of the big "features" that the industry was touting: the ability to select a G, PG, PG-13 or R rating for the movie. So far, Hollywood has never delivered on that. Then, when a companies (like clearplay) enter the market to fill the gap, they get sued. This bill protects that right to skip the content you don't want to see. There are a lot of good movies out there that would be a lot better if they would just leave out some unnecessary obscene material
Re:Ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:They must have solved all the other problems (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Skewed Justice (Score:2, Insightful)
as sad as that statement is i feel the same way. i'd like to see some right wings congressmen get shafted by bubba. you can't possibly argue that you are more emotionally damaged by someone downloading your song, then getting raped.
i'm just waiting for the time when some militia group takes over the gov and sets things right.
Re:They must have solved all the other problems (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:*sigh* I knew I'd have to do this sooner or lat (Score:3, Insightful)
Which probably won't result in any more than cosmetic changes. If you have only two political parties it's quite cheap for special interests to buy both of them.
This is the beginning of a moral right (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for abolishing copyright as applied to published works, but unpublished works are the only true 'intellectual property'.
If it's unpublished, it remains property. Once published, it belongs to the people and enters the public domain.
The archaic 'copyright incentive' was only a sweetener that granted a publication monopoly for a limited time. It's time that ended (at least on the Internet).
So, yes, if the IP is unpublished and under lock and key, then anyone who steals it and publishes it is a criminal of the first order. Although, someone who privately distributes something under NDA to 50,000 conference delegates does not really deserve as much damages as a movie company who has distributed a DVD to 50 reviewers.
ebay? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:last time i checked.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not even that. The Corporations doing the lobbying are only a tiny minority of those which exist. It's probably closer to the truth to say that the US is being run by professional lobbyests. Who represent the interests of a few corporations, organised crime, nutcases and possibly even foreign governments.
Best thing of all... (Score:2, Insightful)
Family Entertainment and Copyright Act Law!
Re:Not that bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course there isn't. And the people who do it are assholes catering to pathetic little losers with no patience and/or willingness to pay people for what they create.
But you shouldn't go to jail for being an asshole.
Re:Funny that they stress "Family Entertainment". (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the key, you see. Cunning use of bills.
As you say, putting 'family' in the name is good. Or perhaps you might slip something evil in with something good. Perhaps it's a 'perverted arts' amendment into the bill to evacuate the town of Springfield. You vote for it? Next election campaign, "he voted for government money for perverts!" You vote against it? Next election campaign, "he voted against the evacuation!" Better yet, if you then remove the evil amendment and have the vote again... Next election campaign, "he flip-flops!"
Ah, the joys of governmental corruption ;-)
Re:Not that bad... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that three years in jail is harsh, and probably out of line when compared to drunk driving. I would guess that on your first offense the judge isn't likely to send you to prison for three years. What would you suggest is an appropriate punishment? I would guess that most pirates do not have the means to pay for the financial damages that early release of some movies (The Hulk, for example) can cause. If you do $20 million in damages and you can't pay for it how long should you go to jail?
Re:Not just Americans (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:American Law, got to love it (Score:3, Insightful)
The loss of our bread and circuses.
While many of the ultra wealthy would love to destroy the Middle Class, it's an amazing stabilizing influence. Everyone in it is highly unlikely to rise up against the government in any dangerous way. How many suicide bombers have season tickets, a three bedroom house and a mortgage?
It also provides a means for the masses to channel our energy into financial and economic activities, and gives the Lower Classes (I'm using these terms in a purely economic manner, please do not make any race, culture, religion or other connections). The lower classes can have the hope of living "The American Dream" and advancing economically.
Destroy the middle class, and you lose all the stabilizing factors it provides, and you have a disenfranchised population who remembers the middle class and is pissed that it vanished.
What's happening now with the "Generation X" situation is an entire generation is not expected to do as well as their parents. The end result will be a gradual, generational erosion of the "Middle Class" until it can vanish without the initial "They ruined me" reaction of a sudden destruction.
While in the short term this means the Upper, Upper Class can make it nearly impossible for others to enter their monetary realm, it does, in the long run, increase the liklihood of wholesale political overthrow.
On a side note, they don't realize that the most effective long term strategy for stability and peace ion the Middle East is to encourage the development of a middle class.
Just like in France... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not just Americans (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that US law most definitly does not apply to the people kidnaapped to Cuba. Effectivly the people held in Guantanamo Bay appear to be held somewhere where their kidnappers are not subject to any country's laws.
lets hunt (Score:5, Insightful)
might as well add the pastors children to the list too.
The only way I can see the stop laws like this is to send the ruling class's children to prison.
Re:Not that bad... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have also watched hundreds of movies where sombody got their throat cut, but it did not explicitly depict the gushing blood, the cutee's bubbling, burbling, rasping sounds as he tried to breathe through a severed esophogus and inhaled his own blood, but the entertainment value was not diminished.
So, if these scenes were edited out of a movie before I saw it, I would not miss them. If the movie is well made with an entertaining story line, the gratuitous scenes are not necessary.
Further, all the hand-wringing over the artist's "rights" is a crock. Untalented "artists" try to compensate for lack of talent with sensational special effects, gore, sex, etc. Most of them should study the classics (Citizen Caine, Casablanca, The Magnificant Seven, et al) and get a clue about what real artists do.
Re:Not that bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
What if my DVD has scratches and cannot play a certain chapter, so I skip it?
What if I close my eyes during a pivotal moment of the film?
What if I watch a "modified for public broadcast" version of the film, with major scenes/language/etc. cut out?
What if I watch a movie halfway through, then shut it off because it's crap (*cough*Butterfly Effect*cough*)?
Gimme a break.
You also argue that you won't know what's been removed-- I beg to differ. See, they'll still be releasing/making the regular DVDs, VHSs, etc.. and I'm sure there will be information somewhere about what was removed or questionable; if not by this company than by the numerous other websites on the internet that detail film gore/language/sexuality.
Re:Not that bad... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not that bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is now a demonstrable, real need for networks where *all* activities are double blind encrypted transactions through an arbitrary, configurable number of intermediaries who can *prove* they dont know who is sending them data or what data they are handling.
A network such as this clearly falls under the fair use statues as a way to maintain secure person to person communication and confidential file sharing (ala PGP et al), and if it is constructed in such a way that only request originators and suppliers *can* know what they are using the network for yet still cannot know *who* they are doing it with, it would more than satisfy legal concerns such as providing plausible deniability.
Therefore 'sharers' and 'users' can still be caught but only through fairly onerous chores like monitoring thier personal computers during use to see exactly what they are sharing or downloading. This is much more analogous to conventional law enforcement techniques for doing video surveillance and audio monitoring - an agent basically has to get a warrant *with probable cause* to initiate any of these activities, and it is not clear to me that data transactions deserve any less legal protection.
So, to end this somewhat rant like spiel, it is clear that this kind of legislation may be a net *good* for the community in that it forces us to develop a better peered infrastructure simply to maintain our fair use rights.
Heck, i might have to buckle down and give something back to the open source community and the internet community at large at long last myself.
Now if someone would just pay me and my crew our cost of living expenses for as long as it would take to build a network of this sort, or even better if a non profit foundation or relatively wealthy private benefactor would post a bounty ala the "XPrize" with well defined acceptance criteria for such a network (double blind, multiple stops, no scaling issues, configurable encryption levels, automated discovery, etc) I would be able to convince a serious crew to do this now (and we would even donate the resulting IP to the sponsoring org or the open source community - which now that i think about it would be a nice prize requirement) rather than working on other stuff to get paid and pursuing this sort of thing as a hobby.
Seriously interested parties feel free to contact me at zuz(del)ulo at g(del)mail (del). com. I have been thinking somewhat seriously about the algorithmic side of this for quite some time. On the whole, however, it is pretty clear to me that community forces will force the evolution of something with these characteristics, most likely within the next 24 months or so.
Re:Not that bad... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not that bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of what an artist (in this case, the Director, Producer, Writer, Actors, Editor, etc.) tries to do with his or her medium, is to convey information. Some of the information is logic (story), some is emotional. (in fact, Aristotle said that it's best to make arguments using three elements together: logos, ethos, and pathos - logic, ethics, and emotion).
So while some people don't require more than a subtle implied sexual encounter, others are less sensitive, or maybe the artist wants to dial-up the emotional impact a notch or two for dramatic effect.
Who the FUCK are YOU, to say that an artist can not use his or her medium in this way?
You are a paying customer. So when material is too explicit for your tastes, simple; don't pay for that material. Don't watch. 'k?
Yes, it's true that there are hacks out there (probably 99% of the movie industry) who abuse this freedom, because, frankly, sex sells. Also, there's simply a style in moviemaking in our contemporary era, that calls for such intensity of explicitness, or pathos, (similar to the 19th century Fauvists painters use of intense color and crude shapes). Maybe a decade or two from now, that style may change, or not, depending on the tastes of the audience, and how strongly the market is controlled by government/religious regulation.
It could be said that the current "style" of moviemaking is driven by market demand. And that demand, is shaped, in part, by a social backlash to religious repression of sexuality, dating back to your cited "golden age" of classic cinema.
I posit that without such repression, people, in general, will see such explicitness, and eventually get sick of it, and the demand for that style will change, to something else.
I would like to see that happen. As a market response to a supply of material that's over-saturated in explicitness.
But the more folks like James Dobson, Michael Powell, and yourself, try to tell people what they can (or should) or can not (or should not) see, or create, the more people will want to see, or create those things.
I want to see good moviemaking, and more emphasis on subtlety, and logos and ethos, and less emphasis on pathos, as well.
But I'm voting with my dollars. I don't think that government or church should intervene in this market, other than to break industry dominance by the few players, both in production and distribution.
If the market is freed, demand will drive the next evolution in cinema. (and not, as Lucas and his ilk wants us to believe, technology - technology could make it possible to break the screwed up over-consolidated market, but it's not going to do anything to change demand-driven stylistic content - who here is sick of "good eye-candy, crappy story" movies? raise your hand.
Re:Not that bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but not for the reason you probably think.
Civilly, copyright is a strict liability statute. Thus, if you engage in infringing conduct, you have broken the law. It does not matter at all what your intent was. Even if you do not actually believe that you are engaging in prohibited conduct, and it is not even reasonable for you to believe that you are engaging in prohibited conduct, if you do it, you're an infringer.
Your mental state generally only has an affect on the damages you have to pay.
Criminally, willfulness is required, which is a fairly moderate standard. However, IMO unless you honestly have a credible, though erroneous belief in the non-infringing nature of your actions, you're likely to be considered to be a willful infringer. Most of the beliefs about what is and isn't infringement that I see around here probably fall on the non-credible side of the line. Additionally, some courts may simply decide that if the action was undertaken willfully, that is sufficient, even if there was no willful intent to infringe.
So your proposal doesn't help people to not commit crimes. If they take some infringing action even with regards to encrypted data they don't know the contents of, then they are probably still criminal infringers. After all, courts do not look favorably on the concept of willful blindness, which is basically what you propose.
What you're really doing is making it difficult to get caught at these crimes, which is a different proposition. It's sort of the difference between how one could avoid a murder conviction by either a) not murdering people, or b) making sure to not leave any evidence behind that points to oneself.
A network such as this clearly falls under the fair use statues as a way to maintain secure person to person communication and confidential file sharing (ala PGP et al), and if it is constructed in such a way that only request originators and suppliers *can* know what they are using the network for yet still cannot know *who* they are doing it with, it would more than satisfy legal concerns such as providing plausible deniability.
Like I said, plausible deniability is a really bad thing to rely on; courts simply do not like it, and if you make the attempt, you can probably rely on them to not be friendly should you need to rely on them to be voluntarily lenient.
Also, fair use is only in one statute, and it has nothing to do with what you propose. As for technology providers, they would be relying on the current formulation of contributory and vicarious liability (read the Sony and Napster cases for more on that, particularly Napster as a cautionary example) to avoid liability themselves.
However, the Supreme Court is at this moment reconsidering the Sony precedent, and there is a very real possibility that the creators or providers of a network as you envision could end up being liable for its use since despite it having many possible uses, it's also practically intended for an illegal one. It doesn't help that you just underlined that with your post here in a public forum, should it be you that faces future legal action. We'll know how this shakes out in the summer, when the Grokster opinion is issued.
In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Before you start dressing in sackcloth and ashes over Bush's signing of this bill, first ask yourself if your own representatives or senators voted for it. The reason we're in this mess is because people like you find it easier to blame the big guy on national television instead of little guy who only makes your state and local newspapers.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)