P2P Legal Stuff Revisited

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 20, 2005, 9:30 pm

eep!

The bill, approved by Congress on Tuesday, is written so broadly it could make a federal felon of anyone who has even one copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released. Stiff fines of up to $250,000 can also be levied. Penalties would apply regardless of whether any downloading took place.
If signed into law, as expected, the bill would significantly lower the bar for online copyright prosecutions. Current law sanctions criminal penalties of up to three years in prison for "the reproduction or distribution of 10 or more copies or phonorecords of one or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of $2,500 or more."
Invoking a procedure used for noncontroversial legislation, the U.S.
House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the
measure, called the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act. Because the bill already has cleared the Senate, it now goes to President Bush for his signature.

update: File-swappers who distribute a single copy of a prerelease movie/software on the Internet can be imprisoned for up to three years, under a bill that's slated to become the most dramatic expansion of online piracy penalties in years.

Nick · Post by **Nick** » April 20, 2005, 9:56 pm

Wait I sec, I r dim, does this apply only to pre-released stuff, or to everything?

Either way, load of balls, although in theory all you gotta do to evade capture is move the stuff out of your 'shared folder', would that work?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 20, 2005, 10:35 pm

Let the pedophile go officer! We have a pre release movie watcher to catch!

I'm curious what they mean by "commerically released". That could mean commercially released in theaters or commercially released on DVD.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » April 20, 2005, 11:31 pm

you helped elect your current government, dumb ass. hope you enjoy the results of it.

Kylere · Post by **Kylere** » April 20, 2005, 11:36 pm

I wish this was atually Kooky, because it would be fun to rub it in her face that she had to come back.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 21, 2005, 12:02 am

The comments are inane enough to be the real kooky if it thinks P2P issues were the primary factor in my decision making the last election.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » April 21, 2005, 12:25 am

its been fairly apparent since 2000 that the bush admin and his worthless cronies in congress are for sale for any asinine cause that can cut them an adequate check. this is why you have asinine shit like the DMCA. I thought you would fully support stuff like this, because surely your right to steal copyrighted IP is superceded by your team winning the election?!?!?!

Nick · Post by **Nick** » April 21, 2005, 12:54 am

On a side note, what is with all these "not real Kyoukan" comments, have I missed something?

The joined date looks accurate enough......

Kithyen · Post by **Kithyen** » April 21, 2005, 1:20 am

I'm not too worried since it's been ages since I've downloaded or hosted anything that could construed as illegal (Bittorrent trackers are being watched more closely these days and typing any movie title in kazaa comes back with 300 results of "LOL_12_YEAR_OLD_GETS_REAMED_IN_THE_ASS_BY_HER_GRANDDAD.MPG")

I think the punishment's a bit ridiculus. Hell, drunk drivers get less than that shit sometimes on their second and third offense. I can only imagine prison life for these "evil-doers".

"Dude, I got put here for beating a man to death with his own leg."

"What about him? What's he in for?"

"Oh don't fuck with him. He hosted a Starwars movie a month before it was supposed to be released in the theaters."

Frightened gasps from all the surrounding inmates.

Niffoni · Post by **Niffoni** » April 21, 2005, 1:32 am

I think you miss the point... The entertainment industry has billions of dollars to spare to the re-election campaigns of the fine men and women who make the laws.

Drunk driving victims don't have shit.

Who do you think is going to get more aggressive protection?

Kithyen · Post by **Kithyen** » April 21, 2005, 1:34 am

Niffoni wrote:I think you miss the point... The entertainment industry has billions of dollars to spare to the re-election campaigns of the fine men and women who make the laws.

Drunk driving victims don't have shit.

Who do you think is going to get more aggressive protection?

Meh, good point.

Drasta · Post by **Drasta** » April 21, 2005, 2:19 am

the people should of course ... the goverment is for the people ...isn't it ...? /scarcasm off

Kelgar · Post by **Kelgar** » April 21, 2005, 2:28 am

You mean they might start going after people who don't fall into the category of grade school or college age kids whose families are not wealthy enough to afford a decent lawyer for constant court battles? Wow. They're finally becoming less pussyish about their targets.

Adex_Xeda · Post by **Adex_Xeda** » April 21, 2005, 3:54 pm

Attack the source.

Don't buy from major media labels.

Zaelath · Post by **Zaelath** » April 21, 2005, 5:35 pm

I can appreciate the industry pushing hard on the "pre-release" stuff.. realistically they make most of their money back in the first few weeks.

Similar to the computer game industry really; all the safedisc and other copy protection stuff is just a desperate attempt to keep the cracked game from being distributed for a few weeks so they can make some money.

If they are to go down this road though, they should just give up on perpetual copyright as a means to enforce frivolous lawsuits against ficticious losses.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » April 21, 2005, 6:14 pm

I don't have a real problem with it either although I can see it becoming just the tip of the iceberg as far as laws like this go. If you're going to steal something (and let's face it, that's what it is, and yeah I download stuff to 'evaluate' too) and then share it it's not going to hurt you to wait until it's released.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » April 21, 2005, 6:35 pm

I don't have a problem with a crackdown on prereleased copies and camcordered movies. After it's been released on DVD, it usually spreads all over the place and with the price of DVDs, most people will balance out things by buying DVDs along with watching some downloaded stuff.

In the comic book scan world, it's generally considered beneficial to the comic industry as many are using scanned comics to evaluate new series that they would never buy otherwise. The same holds true for movies. I bet Aslanna buys Sideways after giving it a 10/10 rating!