Justice Department Promises Stronger Copyright Punishments 322
An anonymous reader writes "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stated that the Justice department will be getting even harder on copyright infringement, targeting repeat offenders. The new 'Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007' is headed for Congress promising to 'hit criminals in their wallets' hoping to ensure that any 'ill-gotten gains' are forfeited.
Look over there! Pirates! and Ninjas! (Score:3, Insightful)
Murders and rapists (Score:5, Insightful)
Corruption at the Justice Department. The laws are to protect the citizens. The citizens do not want strong copyright punishments. That is what the big media corporations want.
What is an IP law? (Score:5, Insightful)
Be careful, whenever some politician blabbers on about "Intellectual Property", it really means they are in bed with the Megacorps and want to muddy the issue in order to set some bastardized legal precedent on the sheep-like public who won't notice a thing until the water boils.
Penalties? (Score:5, Insightful)
"said he 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."
So, what if no one's profiting off of the infringement?
He may not get to resign (Score:2, Insightful)
He has George Bush's backing but so did Rummy and then Boom he was gone.
Of course. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that copyright infringement is criminal, politicians, attorneys and law enforcement can all cry for even more money, to be "tough on crime". Plus, since I'd guess most everyone over age ten in the US has infringed someone's copyright (downloaded something, photocopied without permission, duped a video tape, etc), it becomes yet another crime you can be charged with if someone in power decides you need to be arrested.
What we really need is copyright reform.
"Ill Gotten Gains" (Score:5, Insightful)
Cool. That is the way it should be.
Or even on voter fraud. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it's a good thing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
'He also said he 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.'
Now... where have we heard that before? Oh yes, that sounds just like the drug laws that let police seize your house if they find you had marijuana inside it.
Does this mean your computer (and possibly your home) can be taken by government officials when you've pirated a few too many MP3s? Or written DVD-playback software for Linux?
In any case, this will give law enforcers another tool, like the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror," to make their jobs as all-encompassingly powerful and unaccountable as possible.
Re:Drop the hammer on them (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always been a supporter of two-term presidents (and their staffs):
One term in office.
One term in jail.
Re:What is an IP law? (Score:5, Insightful)
And they are doing a fine job of it, with the uncritical repetition in this article of curious notion of "intellectual property thieves".
Intellectual "property" is a terrible metaphor. "Property" is a legal machine that is designed to enforce capture of negative externalities. That is, when you own property, you are responsible for its upkeep. Without property rights you could dump your wastes or graze your sheep on the commons, and not ever pay any costs for that. The notion of property, first and foremost, forces you to pay your own way on your own property.
Intellectual "property" on the other hand is a legal machine that is intended to enforce capture of positive externalities: good things that happen to other people because of your work. [ssrn.com]
Patents, trademarks and copyright are sufficiently unlike property that any attempt to reason about them using property metaphors is doomed to failure from the outset. It is a tad disturbing that this failed metaphor has become so much a part of the popular legal consciousness that even the Attorney General is able to remember it.
This is not to say that individuals cannot have rights in patents, trademarks and copyrights. But those rights are not ownership rights to property, and violating those rights is not theft.
Re:What about when there are NO monetary gains? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is a reason the Founding Fathers hated IP (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea was that the creator would have a monopoly on the creation long enough that they would be motivated to do the work.
After that the creation was turned over to society so anyone could build on it.
The original meaning changed somehow so now instead of being a temporary, governmanet-granted monopoly even the general populace thinks that it is possible to OWN an idea.
This is a recent historical event but has somehow become so pervasive that most people I talk to actually believe that the creator of a work has a moral right to control that work for the rest of time. That has never been the case and shouldn't be now.
We should fix the laws so that they enforce the original intent. Copyright and Patents should be enough motivate creators to create- not to hold society for ransom.
Re:There is a reason the Founding Fathers hated IP (Score:5, Insightful)
Because patents often are about physical phenomena which can't be duplicated, and because "Inventing" is in a sense not creating something which did not exist, but rather being really smart and be the first one to figure something out.
Take fire, for example. Imagine someone having a patent on using fire for cooking. That would be a rich family by now, huh? Or what if my ancestors had filed a patent on using a round device called a wheel to reduce friction.
Todays patents on compressed sound and video (aka mp3 or dvd) are more advanced, but they still deal with something which is essentially a naturally occuring phenomenon just waiting to be discovered and used.
The purpose of patents should be to reward the inventor/discovery so society can benefit from more inventions, but the reward should not be so large the inventor benefits more than society does.
Re:There is a reason the Founding Fathers hated IP (Score:2, Insightful)
For the reasons they always were supposed to expire:
A. To stop hereditary dynasties founded on the work of others, as opposed to the sweat of one's brow (note that if you died back then your spouse and children kept the rewards until expiry).
B. To promote the common good and acceleration of knowledge within society - just because someone invented the fork (an American invention), that shouldn't mean someone else can't invent a fork with a mustache protector, just as someone inventing a steam radiator didn't stop my grandfather from patenting improvements on steam radiators.
C. To return the rewards of invention to society - in the old days, many patents were public patents, owned by the state, used to pay for things like roads for the citizens. Same goes for works of fiction - you only had to make sure noone wrote it in the last 17 years, but no sense for a novel not to be reprinted after a reasonable length of time.
That's just a start.
bring it on, morons (Score:5, Insightful)
in the other corner, legions of poor, borderless, highly motivated, technically astute, and media loving teenagers who couldn't give one rats ass about the bloated overreaching joke that copyright law in this country has become, because it is way beyond speaking to them in the language of right and wrong
copyright law is WAY beyond protecting the artist's rights when you can't play "happy birthday" on a piano without the need to pay someone/ get permission, and mickey mouse will NEVER be in the public domain. the idea is to strike a balance between the common good and the rights of the artist. but moneyed middle men have stuck a big fat finger on that scale, and it's permanently imbalanced. in other words, copyright law is broken, corrupt, insoluble, dead
poor teenagers versus corporate interests. it's not even a blink of an eye who will obviously win: the teenagers
the future of ip law in the usa is china: lip service played to the idea at official levels, some high profile demonstration busts that don't change a thing, and rampant complete ignorance of and ignoring of ip law on the street
copyright is dead. corporations killed it by not playing fair and only looking for some more $ at the expense of our common cultural riches. you can't measure common cultural riches on the corporate ledger, so it never got a fair reckoning in the boardroom. the result: complete disconnect between law and reality
Re:There is a reason the Founding Fathers hated IP (Score:3, Insightful)
So what? A goodly chunk of America's economy was once based on slavery - including both chattel bondage and debt bondage. Even beyond that, when the country was founded the franchise was limited to a minority of citizens.
Since they are thing we had when the country was founded, shall we roll back the laws that have corrected those abuses as well?
Re:There is a reason the Founding Fathers hated IP (Score:2, Insightful)
Now to answer your question about why they should expire...If you are given exclusive right to your writings forever, that sure is an incentive to publish your works. However, we don't want you to just publish your ideas. We want to use them, that's what promotes progress. So we can't very well let you have exclusive rights to them forever (what use are they to you after your dead anyway?). So we set an expiration. This also gives you an incentive to create a new work. So we give you exclusive rights to your works for a long enough time for you to profit AND to publish your next work(s).
Re:Wrong again. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the deal has become lop-sided. There's no way that an author's great grandchildren holding the rights to his writings up to 70 years after he died promotes the progress of science or the useful arts. That's just called greed. The author doesn't create more if he knows his distant descendants will still be extorting money for almost a century after he kicks off.
Arguably, the public domain is also vitally important to progress. Think about all the inventions that would have been lost or the massive inflation of prices (due to royalties) if patents were essentially perpetual as well. Think about historians in 100 years, trying to figure out if they can reprint a photo out of fear that someone, somewhere will show up and demand royalties because the photo was taken by their great-great-grandfather. It's already a nightmare figuring out reproduction rights.
The system is broken, and stronger penalties won't fix it. Existing punishments are adequate if enforced against the real problem - large scale commercial piracy. Sane copyright terms, in conjunction with media companies not treating customers like felons, would be a good start.
Re:Look over there! Pirates! and Ninjas! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it's a good thing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, now
Re:He may not get to resign (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it is. But how could this possibly be a bad thing? Between his disastrous mismanagement of the war, massive deficit spending, domestic spying, and the way his administration has polarized this country, they're doing him a favor. It's like taking away the keys from the drunk at your party, or a loaded gun away from a three-year old.
Consequences of an Ownership Society (Score:3, Insightful)
This kind of posturing and eventual law enforcement activity where they'll perp-walk someone for some kind of copyright violation will get votes and most importantly raise campaign contributions.
I suspect more than a few slashdotters think that "the private sector does a better job at most things than the government.." The private sector is maximizing their revenues by enforcing its ownership rights and NOW it's a problem?
Deja Vu all over again (Score:5, Insightful)
Then the Feds asked for more power, because they needed to get the supply chain, and grabbing a few Ferraris and yachts of really rich cocaine suppliers would help. The American people went along with this, too.
Then the Feds just assumed they had the power to grab the assets of the dealers. The American people didn't really think anything of this. After all, these drug dealers were bad people and besides, they were shooting up parts of the city in turf wars, so let the Feds grab the drug dealer BMWs with the really ugly custom wheels.
Then the Feds began seizing the assets of the drug users. Most Americans were under the impression the drug users were strung out heroine and crack junkies, so didn't give a shit. Only now Mr and Mrs Average American are learning otherwise, because their teenage son got pulled over in mom's car, and he had a joint on him, and the police are keeping the car.
I predicted this would happen at the very first stage. I was right. Even if the Feds swear up and down on a stack of bibles that they're only going to use this power on the big time commercial piracy operations, I won't believe them. Maybe today they mean it, but what about next tomorrow?
Fuck the government. They will ALWAYS abuse even the smallest amount of power. That's why we have to have the tightest possible controls on them as possible. If making it hard for them to abuse their job has the side affect of making it hard for them to do their job, so what. My rights and freedom are THAT FUCKING IMPORTANT.
Re:He may not get to resign (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously, it would be naive to believe that politics weren't a factor, but I think there are larger issues at stake: you'll notice that some Republicans have been grilling the hell out of Gonzalez and asking him to resign.
One issue is reining in Bush's "Imperial Presidency", which acts like it can do whatever it wants whenever it wants... and the hell with Congress, the Constitution, human rights, the rule of law and the will of the American people. That's not healthy for the country, and Congress is right to try to rein him. We need to be a country where nobody, not even the President, whether he's Democrat or Republican, is above the law.
The other issue is that the firings appear to have been motivated to help the Republican party and hurt the Democratic party. Yes, you do get to appoint whoever you want when you win the presidency. However, once you've appointed them, they need to be independent and left to do their jobs. Firing people because they've been investigating corrupt Republicans is not OK, it's putting the interests of your party ahead of the interests of your country, and the pursuit of justice, and that's deeply corrupt.
Re:Or even on voter fraud. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you hate Freedom so much?
Good Point ... pitiful gang of politicians (Score:4, Insightful)
corporatist government strangle hold on IPR, patents
China, Russia, India
and the International Court to go fuck themselves with their dead-battery dildo.
But,it ain't like the USA has been able to figure anything out 12 months or 12
years out. Clueless courts, diplomacy, domestic policy, government
incompetent slime-ball pitiful gang of politicians have not been collected together
in one government since the Mao-China's "Cultural Revolution", Stalin's Purges,
Hitler's Perfect Aryan Religion
Re:He may not get to resign (Score:3, Insightful)
Second off I don't really see the difference, instead of removing every attorney at the beginning of the term, why not wait til you see that their politics don't jive with your politics. I dislike Clinton's approach of firing everyone immediately no matter what their politics, the fact he removed them all tells that either he was doing favors for those who got in or only wanted people who agreed with him, either way I disagree with that policy.
On the other hand with Bush's move he changed the attorney's later at his discretion. Is it partisan politics? I've not looked into enough to decide, but I'll bet it is (he's not going to remove people he agrees with) but at the same time is it his choice? Yes.
The real question, has every president ahead of him enjoyed a similar power? In this respect, yes. That doesn't mean everything he does is gravy with me, the signing statement things isn't exactly kosher in my book. But this is the same power that every president has enjoyed and it appears to only be a problem today.
Re:He may not get to resign (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush, however, got everyone to fill out their resignations, and just kept them.
The ones fired, were prosecuting Republican election fraud, or failing to persue Democratic voter fraud -- of which I think there is perhaps one legitimate case in the entire country. They've been trying to make a case like someone is able to rig an election by busing voters here and there, to commit a felony, only to change the vote by a bus load of people. Ain't going to work. The vast majority (OK -- ALL) legendary voter fraud comes down to people registering in one place, and failing to un-register when they move elsewhere. Innocent, and normal stuff. While disenfranchising voters, and throwing out legitimate votes, is somehow not a federal crime and happens all the time.
>> But the Prosecutor firings are even a bigger deal than this.
From the Daily Kos;
McClatchy:
In an e-mail dated May 11, 2006, Sampson urged the White House counsel's office to call him regarding "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam," who then the U.S. attorney for southern California. Earlier that morning, the Los Angeles Times reported that Lam's corruption investigation of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., had expanded to include another California Republican, Rep Jerry Lewis.
Perhaps what is lost in all this confusion over who said what when and which prosecutors were bushies and which were not is just how significant Lam's investigation was. This paragraph from an August 2006 article in Vanity Fair will instruct:
Tens of thousands of pages of congressional documents going as far back as 1997 have been demanded by the U.S. Attorney's Office in San Diego. The C.I.A., Pentagon, I.R.S., and F.B.I. are conducting investigations, and at least three congressional committees are cooperating in hopelessly tardy fashion. "We are scrubbing" is how a staffer on the intelligence committee puts it. Washington is unraveling.
>> So it was all about stopping the Carol Lam investigation. It leads back to Abramoff, arms contractors, and two murdered prosecutors.
Well we put tons of our population away for drugs (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, it seems like they think of ways to make folks criminals and disenfranchise them.
Re:There is a reason the Founding Fathers hated IP (Score:2, Insightful)