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As a none resident of the USA (Score:5, Funny)
*ahem* sorry, but the summary just forced me to say that.
WTF (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
"the last thing we need is another government organization"
There, fixed that for you.
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Not Satisfied (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason they are not satisfied has nothing to do with a perception of how extreme the punishments should be. The reason they are not satisfied is very simple:
It's not working.
The complete collection of laws, technologies, and enforcement agencies that presently exist are failing to stop the widespread practice of copyright infringement. Given that the industry controllers are stuck in the past, they are doing the only thing they know how to do: pass even more laws, make even more enforcement agencies, and make the punishments even worse.
As much as we would like to see the dinosaurs roll over and die...they don't want to. They will struggle for life, and have no qualms about causing as much waste, suffering and injustice as they can in the process.
To the RIAA/MPAA: The new world is here. You can't bring the past back. Your attempts at forcing your values on to your clients cannot succeed. All you are doing is harming yourselves and everyone else. You will continue to experience nothing but failure until you embrace the world and harmonize with the technologies that exist and the ways in which your clients want to use them. That is all.
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Re:WTF (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, I'll bet the federal courts strike this law down as being unconstitutional.
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Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
For those who think "I don't copy copyrighted material so I'm immune" should think again.
Have you ever right clicked on a webpage and picked "Save Photo As..."??
Congratulations you have committed a copyright violation unless the owner explicitly gave permission. This goes beyond simply making available on P-P. If you have copyrighted stuff on your computer without the copyright owners permission, you are in violation.
Finding infringers is as simple as finding computers.
Just where did your desktop art come from? Saved any photos from a news story? NASA photo? Clipped any text? The top part of my post is directly cut and pasted from another author. I didn't ask permission. Is it fair use?
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Re:WTF (Score:5, Insightful)
You've just only come to the realization that copyright laws are by definition internally inconsistent and illogical?
This is because the whole notions of copyright and information as "private property" are at odds with the nature of information itself, which lacks the necessary attributes to be "private property".
And so convoluted, idiotic "laws" are made by greedy, deluded people to try to make the impossible happen. Exceptions upon self-contradictions upon stupidity.
The idea is akin to trying to make gravity illegal, followed by elaborate sets of rules about which objects you are alowed to lift and how high you feet are supposed to go when walking, all in the effort to maintain a silly illusion which pads someone's pockets.
There is also a side-effect, desirable by some powermongers, and that is the fact that such "laws" make everyone a criminal, subject to whim of "interpretation" by governmental agencies and politically appointed "justice" departaments. Such as the one the GP mentioned. Pictures in the cache of your web browser are definitely copies (amongst many other stages of processing in your computer) and are identical to pictures you saved yourself, differing only (possibly) in the location where they were saved. Yet the latter is, by definition, a copyright violation, while the first one is one of those, arbitrary, whimsical, "exceptions". "Yes, the gravity does not exist and to prove it you should maintain a state of floatation at least 17 inches off the ground! With the exception of 'Joy periods' whereby you are allowed to kick the planet Earth, but no more frequently then once a second!"
The sooner you realize that information, including thoughts in your head and large integer numbers, unlike physical objects does not fit the primitive, animalistic desire of some to fence it off and sit on it growling "Mine! All Mine! Back off!" with spittle flying, the better.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as the destruction of evidence by the CIA, I'm starting to think that there must be a dedicated corps of decent public servants left in government, our military and in our intelligence services, otherwise, we'd never even hear about these things. Somehow, we've learned about the illegal sur
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Re:As a none resident of the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:what happend to state soverignty (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, UN is only a loss of sovereignty for nations that do not have veto power on the security council. I know you were kidding, but I just had a 3 hour debate on this yesterday with a friend. So the ideas are clear in my mind. Sovereignty is not lost unless the overseeing administrative unit has enforcement power that the (more) local administrative unit cannot legally stop. The only enforcement power that UN has is Article 7 security council resolutions. They are the ones whose violation authorizes enforcement (as in use of weapons) by member nations. Since US has veto power over all security council resolutions, US sovereignty is not lost to the UN. But all the nations outside of the 5 permanent members have lost their sovereignty.
A better example of loss of sovereignty is probably NATO. Because the NATO supreme commander (as far as I understand -- don't quote me on it) has the power to order actions by armies of member nations.
If we were to ever enter into an international treaty that gave some overseeing administrative unit a clear power to veto our laws and was combined with an alliance that gave some supreme commander unequivocal power to order our FBI or military around, then we would (pretty much by definition) lose sovereignty. As it stands, we may still have the power to say "No" to a decision of any international organization that we've joined.
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Re:what happend to state soverignty (Score:5, Interesting)
NATO is more interesting, but as I understand it individual countries supply forces to NATO on an ongoing or as required basis, as opposed to NATO commanders simply choosing and using NATO members troops at will.
In any case I would suggest that sovereignty can only be lost if a country enters an agreement it cannot later unilaterally remove itself from, I would suggest that the individual states of the USA have lost much of their sovereignty but not all (they can still leave?) and EU member states are reducing their own sovereignty but are no where near having lost it. A loss of sovereignty can really only come about by losing a war and being put in a position where you no longer hold any powers of ther region that was your country.
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Re:what happend to state soverignty (Score:5, Interesting)
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WTO Membership (Score:5, Insightful)
Man this is scary. Just the very idea of federal government running around to arrest people on a CIVIL issue where the burden of proof is ( basically ) reversed is frightening and completely contray to the constitution. WTF ?!?!
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In Soviet Socialist States of America (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In Soviet Socialist States of America (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Please, stand by for questioning.
In destroying one, two or 10 of them, we are doing the work of millions. That's why our hand must not tremble, why we must march across the corpses of the enemy toward the good of the people. -- Joseph Stalin
Because remember that "Goals (if noble) justify the means".Remember! (Score:5, Insightful)
Both in opposition to this bill and to state you general feelings that copyright law has become too broad and too far in favor of big media companies.
Do it now, email is good, paper is better.
Re:Remember! (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems that anti-copyright campaigners would much rather portray every copyright owner as being like Madonna, prince or Metallica, rich and arrogant, rather than the reality, which is that the vast majority of copyright holders by number are very small or one-man companies.
if you are an average-wage magazine column writer, copyright law helps protect you from being ripped off. If you are an author, musician or other content creator, the copyright law also helps protect you. the fact that the law also protects some big clueless, evil bastards that none of us like does not mean we should throw out the law. Laws against violence also protect politicians and business people that we hate, that doesn't mean the whole idea of those laws is bad too.
Copyright law needs to be clarified and reformed. But it also needs to be enforced. Writing to your elected representative is the correct way to achieve sensible laws. Breaking the law so you can watch spiderman 3 for free proves their point, not yours.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Remember! (Score:5, Insightful)
How does having a work protected by the government for years after the creator has passed on benefit anyone other than a corporation that is feeding off the works of others?
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Re:Remember! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because big media companies get to write it.
What is it that prevents this also helping out small media companies, and even individuals who create copyrighted works?
As one of those people, I can tell you that it does not help me.
Copyright law needs to be clarified and reformed.
Copyright should not be clarified and reformed, it should be taken back to its original design: about 20 years protection, required explicit registration, and no protection on content that has DRM applied to it. That's what copyright is.
The bullshit that passes as "coypright law" today is legalized extortion.
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Re:Remember! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, I agree, copyright is a good thing. But what we have now is insane. Copyright lasts for the lifetime of the author, plus 70 years. That's essentially in perpetuity, because the public that is alive today, and likely their children and even grandchildren, will never see those works enter the public domain. I can buy an argument that works should remain copyrighted for the lifetime of the author (although I personally do not believe it should be this way), but an additional seventy years? Who does this benefit? Let's see... something that never dies... er, not vampires... Highlander? Oh, right! A big media company!
I don't argue for people making an honest living. But when you've got the government pulling Gestapo shit for the big hitters, that's not honest. That's fascist.
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Re:Remember! (Score:5, Funny)
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Just more evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
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blackmail (Score:5, Insightful)
A determined enemy only has to have a few minutes access to your computer, download a few songs and then report you.
Communism (Score:3)
Too bad that the US wants to wipe out anything that looks/is commie and benefits the people and turn it into something that benefits the few.
A Bigger Picture (Score:5, Informative)
Cool. Another War (Score:5, Insightful)
Then we had the WAR ON TERROR
Now we have the WAR ON COPYING
Funded by the taxpayer of course.
Re:Cool. Another War (Score:5, Interesting)
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People *WILL* stop watching and listening (Score:3, Interesting)
Before long, people will stop watching TV and movies because it LEADS to wanting to record from TV or buying a DVD which leads to wanting to make backups which leads to being a felon! But if you don't know what you're missing, you won't be tempted by the 'drug' that is the entertainment industry.
So now I am imagining an entire future where people are afraid to hum a tune or even create their own entertainment for fear that it is similar enough to something they never heard or saw but is currently controlled by the perpetual copyright holdings of "big media" which officially merged a couple of years ago.
Should this thing pass, darker times will be upon us... not that things aren't pretty dark now.
Re:People *WILL* stop watching and listening (Score:5, Informative)
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These guys are not living in the modern world (Score:5, Insightful)
Their problem is that they're still living in a society where we had:
- No Internet.
- No home cinema systems.
- No media centers.
Many today don't even want to go to the cinemas because they think it's noisy and with annoying people in front of them, or even people telling about the events in the movie or constantly laughing at bad places. Or maybe they just want to easily go to the bathroom when they wish during a LOTR-like movie marathon. So then they pirate stuff instead of just twiddling their thumbs with a useless 50" home cinema system until the artificially delayed DVD/Blu-ray/HD-DVD release is made, usually also with artifically imposed regional restrictions.
I mean, there's a whole new field of technology at play here that completely seem to pass them. They still seem to think we are sitting on: a mix of cassette, vinyl, and CD players, and on CRT TV sets. That's what their business model is still geared for. And people today barely even own these relics anymore. They use the media in totally different ways than before.
Re:These guys are not living in the modern world (Score:4, Insightful)
And your argument is a bit of a strawman.
The real point is: Money in = Money out, in the long term.
We have a many-multi billion video games market. We have the rise of cell-phones/ringtones/ect, which suck enormous amounts of spare income out of the 15-23 target group. All that money obviously is missing somewhere else.
People might spend less money on music because of the internet, not because they download it instead, but the fact that those 50$ cable/dsl/flatrate fee are just missing somewhere else.
And nowadays, a lot of people find better things to do with their time in the web/blogosphere/ect than fullfilling their old role as mindless media consumers.
And ultimately, people who have money to spend are time-limited (as opposed to the typical teenagers that have tons of time, but not the money, and create "no loss" piracy. Or do you think that timmy would have bought those 3500 albums and 700 games he downloaded from piratbay?
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If this is actually implemented.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't you realize.... (Score:4, Insightful)
That this post is a terrorist threat. Now they won't even have to pretend to treat you fairly.
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Someone should read the Constitution (Score:4, Informative)
Not to mention that other countries tend to have laws and Constitutions and claims of sovreignity over their land and inhabitants.
Just a little advance reading could spare a us a whole lot of floundering and discussion.
We have money for this ? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no money for fixing schools. My property taxes have gone way up due to the fact the Current Administration is cutting school aid nationwide. Lucky for my kids we are in a rich area so the parents can still pay.
We are pissing away cubic dollars in Iraq on a scheme to keep Iraqi oil off the market, protect OPEC, and keep prices high.
But, we can set up an entire law enforcement apparatus to protect the richest industry on the planet ? Oops, almost forgot, that industry also owns the media outlets (thank you FCC for allowing mass ownership of media) which the wankers rely upon to be re elected.
Corporate America has gotten just about every Christmas Present it wanted under the Bush Administration. The Bankruptcy Bill was the first shot. Next, continue to subsidize Oil and Gas companies. Make sure that all worker protections, or public protection, is de-fanged, or given to the person who used to lobby against it. Flat top mountains in West Virginia. Allow utilities to continue to build 1950's era generation plants.
Meanwhile, block stem cell research, push "abstinence", and raise the prices of contraception for poor women while making abortion less available.
Bush was honest, once, when he stood before a gathering of huge corporate benefactors, and said "Some call you the elite...I call you my base".
Next up....roadside execution for speeding.
Especially scary (Score:5, Interesting)
This mean that these copyright cops will have the ability to go into a foriegn country, stomp all over the local legal system and then escape back to the US before they can be forced to account for their actions. These are not the actions of a country that wants to earn the respect of the world community.
This will not help the US cause in the long run as it will just cause even greater resentment in the countries on the receiving end of such treatment.
The obvious example is the pirate bay. If they really want to close the pirate bay they need to convince Sweden to pass tighter copyright laws, not go in and bust it illegally like they did. The problem now is that after that stunt it has made it much harder for them to convince the swedish people that such a change in law is neccessary. It has also made many european politicians scared on enacting said laws for fear of being accused of being a lapdog of a deeply unpopular president (Bush).
Maybe some of this situation will change when he leaves office but at the moment no other politician wants to appear to cosy with someone who has made some very questionable decisions and is going to be out of office soon anyway.
If the US really wants to try and encourage europe to adopt their laws, a much better start would be make some sort of concession to the european community. A good start would be allowing US troops to be prosecuted by a european criminal court for crimes they commit in Europe. We are not really that bad in Europe, we are also democratic nations who have very similar outlooks in a great many ways. If the US trusted us a little more that would most likely be reciprocated.
"films left costs"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I had a hard parsing Glickman's quote until I realized what he probably meant was "film theft costs
HELLLLOOO they are lying..... (Score:4, Funny)
Here is my idea of how it goes down:
RIAA: WAAA WAAA WAAA! We lose money!
Gov: Whats wrong?
RIAA: Evil piracy make us lose money!
Gov: OH NOES! How much did you lose?
RIAA: 89 Kajillion Bakillion dollars!
Gov: You know that isn't a real number.
RIAA: 18 Billion dollars (evil pinky to corner of mouth)!
Gov: NO NOES! Lets make crazy laws!
RIAA: YEA!
Fascist imperialism, pure and simple. (Score:5, Interesting)
Uuuuh, right Wally.
So, let's see, some multibillionaire shitbag in Hollywood wants the US .gov to send agents overseas to persecute people in other countries for dealing with objects according to their own local laws and customs.
And this isn't imperialist fascism?
JH Kunstler noted that when local architecture of the commons is reduced to cartoon houses in the burbs and megamalls, you no longer have places worth caring about. Who ever wept at the demolition of a WalMart? Ad when you get enough places in one country that are not worth caring about, you end up with a nation not worth defending.
There's another kind of architecture, and its the architecture of the mind, and it's called "Media". And when enough of it is such crap that no one cares about it, and it is seen as more of a utility than a creation, then it ceases to be a culture worth defending.
With preposterous laws like this, the USA is working very hard at becoming a nation no longer worth defending. People will simply "Walk Away" from this catastrophe of a country, or, as William S Burroughs put it:
"(Thank you America) for being the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams."
RS
If you have ANY SENSE at all, you will get out of the USA as soon as possible. The second wave of mortgage failures will come in March. Once the USA sinks, things will get tough, and legislation like the above will become commonplace, even under a Democratic Administration.
Run. Now. And when you get out, you will see what the rest of the world sees: Those people are fucking crazy.
HW
How is this more of a deterrent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also this brings copyright infringement from a civil tort to a criminal charge. Change of venue to courts already overburdened by America's various other "War on $CONCEPT". And why should this be a criminal offense? The system was already out of balance in favor of the copyright holder, this law would make it egregiously so. If Congress is willing to reduce copyright limits to *reasonable* lengths then maybe it would make sense, but as it stands now almost nothing created in my parent's lifetime will become public domain for me before I die. Copyright is supposed to offer limited protection in return for the work passing to public domain. If it essentially never enters public domain then why should it be protected by criminal penalties? It's like shooting someone for shoplifting, completely out of scope with both the crime and the supposed bargain between the public and copyright holders.
Also in regards to some posts saying that this law protects all equally and is not skewed in favor of large corporations, I must disagree. Large corporations could afford a judgment against them brought successfully by an individual, it would not go so well the other way around. The inherent imbalance between the resources (financial, legal and manpower) of a corporation and an individual pretty much guarantee an individual will be forced to cut a deal or risk their livelihood and freedom while a corporation could stall for years and even if convicted would be able to recover almost instantly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
GOP was in charge of Congress, /. we all saw their name-party plastered in the article splash. Congress is now in Democrat control and suddenly, no Name-Party is being posted on the article splash.
Maybe you should try to RTFA? Let me help you out:
"A bipartisan group of Congressmen (and one woman) yesterday introduced a major bill"
Show me the majority of the Republicans opposing this bill and you'll have a point. Until then, I'm going with "Congress is clueless and sucks" as a generalized statement of how I feel about this.
Re:No naming of Congress Critters? (Score:4, Insightful)
This law is being bought and paid for by big media, like so many other "IP friendly" laws already on the books, meaning that once again we've been sold out by our elected leaders. There are countries where such corporate influence (read: corruption) is illegal, and is considered the treason that it is. It's high time time we start thinking of lobbying and (ahem!) "campaign contributions" in exactly the same way. Feel like peddling your influence to pass a law that goes directly against the best interests of the American people? Hope you can do the time. That's how it should be.
This is just sickening. I have the feeling we're not that far from Joe Public taking serious notice of this, because if the Feds start breaking down doors looking for bootleg videos there's gonna be Hell to pay. The media outfits are just drunk with power
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Re:which is bill number ???? (Score:5, Informative)
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Sponsors (Score:5, Informative)
What you really want to know is the status of the bill. This one has just been introduced and passed to the Judiciary Committee, from the looks of it. But here's a helpful link to the list of cosponsors of the bill [loc.gov].
If you are represented by any of these people in Congress, you have a special duty to write and explain how poorly-represented you are.
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EU citizenship? they'll still come for you (Score:5, Interesting)
So even staying at home won't make you safe
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Re:"It costs $X billion per year" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called elasticity. When the price rises above a negligible amount, a lot of people will no longer consume this particular good. As for the "costs" you mention: A) people are already paying for bandwidth - it doesn't cost them anything extra to download a movie as opposed to letting their connection sit idle; B) burn it to media? who does that?; C) we're posting on /. - clearly our time isn't that valuable :-)
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