RIAA-Backed Warrantless Search Bill In California 208
lordvramir writes "If you run a CD or DVD duplication company and you're based in California, you may soon be subject to warrantless searches in order to 'fight piracy.' California Senate Bill 550, introduced by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Pacoima), has slowly begun making its way through the state legislature as a way to cut down on counterfeit discs, but critics worry that it may open the door to Fourth Amendment violations." This fits in well with other recent moves to neuter the Fourth Amendment.
Oh no! my disc replication plant!! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the most controversial part of the bill, though. SB550 also has provisions that would allow law enforcement to begin inspecting disc replication plants without a warrant in order to verify that they're complying with the law. These inspections must take place during regular business hours, but if officers find equipment that they suspect is being used for non-legit purposes, it can be seized.
I wonder how the summary somehow left out that these warrentless searches are of commercial disc replication plants.
I would assume that all commercial buildings are subject to warrentless searches to enforce various safety and workplace laws...
Anyway, I don't support any degradation of the 4th amendment, but I don't appreciate the deceptive manipulation of large numbers of people who can be counted on to not read the fucking article either.
Oligarchy, here we come ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Once you reach the point where the police forces are there to enforce the rights and whims of corporations, you might as well accept the fact that you're no longer a democracy.
A lot of these things used to be civil law, but now all of a sudden we're using tax-payer funded agencies to police on behalf of copyright holders.
If people were astonished to realize that the FBI spends most of its cybercrime resources of child pornography ... wait until traditional police forces and government agencies are spending much of their time policing copyright.
This will only get worse.
That's just it - safety and workplace laws (Score:5, Insightful)
I would assume that all commercial buildings are subject to warrentless searches to enforce various safety and workplace laws...
But that's just it - there are exceptions to warrantless searches on grounds such as public safety and worker safety... e.g., health inspections, nursing home inspections, OSHA compliance, etc.
Extending those kinds of warrantless searches to look for potential copyright infringement is not in the same vein. Where is the pressing public necessity that justifies the encroachment on the 4th Amendment? To me, it just sounds like the copyright industries want the taxpayer-funded police to act as their own private security force. What if every industry took that approach? Why not have warrantless searches of research labs in order to make sure there is no patent infringement going on?
Re:This is one of the few that is legal and 'right (Score:4, Insightful)
Businesses are not people, they don't have any rights against warrantless search.
This is one of the few times on this type of issue where the government isn't overreaching and violating the constitution.
We also already have inspections of other industrys for illegal practices (food industrys, chemical industrys, etc.) So why should replication businesses have any special status.
Because illegal practices in those other industries can lead to mass death and loss of life. Tainted food could kill consumers, unsafe chemical plants can explode and leave a city sized crater.
Who dies if the copyright cops have to wait to get a warrant as opposed to not getting one?
Re:What the hell? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Indiana Supreme Court wrote "We believe however that a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence."
It is abundantly clear that modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is incompatible with the Fourth Amendment.
Re:What the hell? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quoting from the inset document in one of the articles, "In the 1920s, legal scholarship began criticizing the right [to resist unlawful entry by a police officer] as valuing individual liberty over physical security of the officers."
At what point in the history of the United States did "legal scholarship" become an authoritative source of law capable of destroying inherent natural rights not granted by the US Constitution but specifically called out as examples of existing rights such as those expressed in the 4th amendment such as "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures..." To say that there is no right to resist an unlawful entry (and arrest) because there are now "after the fact" remedies available that may not have been available to those in the 18th century misses the point that unlawful entry and arrest can be just as effectively used to suppress and intimidate now as it was then. Exercising remedies to get out of jail after an unlawful arrest takes time and money, time spent in jail and fighting an unlawful arrest takes away from time required to earn a living (try missing 2 weeks of work and income - see what happens to your bills and your job), and the stain of the arrest may take a long time to fade, if in fact it ever does.
Without *some* possibility of a negative consequence to an unlawful entry and/or arrest, what is left to hold police back from engaging in whatever related conduct they so choose, so long as they know that their superior officers (who aren't elected officials) won't hold them at fault or punish them?
Democrats^H^H^H statists back unconst. bill (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right; this is not Democrat vs Republican. It is statist vs libertarian.
If there was EVER any definable difference between Democrat and Republican, it has been gone for a LONG time. To SOME degree there is a remnant of liberal (D) vs conservative (R) difference, but even that is obsolete thinking. It is about the other orthogonal axis. It is about the lure of power vs a willingness to LEAVE THE HELL ALONE. It is about caving in to faceless demonic corporations vs seeing to the rights of the people. It is about tilting at windmills: war on drugs, war on terrorism, war on copyright "infringement."
Re:Maybe Constitutional, Maybe Not (Score:5, Insightful)
My purpose was to inform people about the law as it is, not to argue what the law should be or curse the Court for making the law what it is. Polemics don't help anybody understand whether this law is likely to be upheld or not.
Re:That's just it - safety and workplace laws (Score:4, Insightful)
*shrugs* It's just part of California's grand plan to send more DVD fabrication jobs to China. Heck, it's not like much of the commercial piracy is being done in the U.S. anyway.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Democrats back unconstitutional bill... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:riaa backs unconstitutional bill... (Score:4, Insightful)
It'll never survive federal court. This is a state official just looking to pocket RIAA money and favors through a bill he know can't survive. It's the same tactic Mitch Daniels of Indiana is using by blocking medicaid/medicare from Planned Parenthood, which is also illegal for him to do.
They do it for press, money, and if they want to seek higher office. But all they are really doing is wasting our time and money on fruitless court battles they can't win.