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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."
The bill could be used to target casual peer-to-peer users, although the Justice Department to date has typically reserved criminal charges for the most egregious cases.
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.
Enactment of these criminal penalties has been a top priority this year for the entertainment industry, which has grown increasingly concerned about the proliferation of copyrighted works on peer-to-peer networks before their commercial release.
"This bill plugs a hole in existing law by allowing for easier and more expeditious enforcement of prerelease piracy by both the government and property owners," said Mitch Bainwol, chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America. "We applaud Congress for taking this step."
The bill's supporters in Congress won passage of the prison terms by gluing them to an unrelated proposal to legalize technologies that delete offensive content from a film. That proposal was designed to address a lawsuit that Hollywood studios and the Directors Guild of America filed against ClearPlay over a DVD player that filtered violent and nude scenes. (ClearPlay had gained influential allies among family groups such as the Parents Television Council and Focus on the Family.)
Peer-to-peer network operators criticized Congress' vote on Tuesday.
"It appears the entertainment industry has once again gotten Congress to use taxpayer dollars to clean up their internal problems," said Michael Weiss, chief executive of StreamCast Networks. Weiss, whose company distributes the Morpheus client, says that many movies and music files that find their way to the Internet early are provided by insiders in the entertainment industry.
Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United, a peer-to-peer software industry association, said his group remains "concerned that the nature of the punishment remains radically disproportionate to the technical crime."
Added Peter Jaszi, a professor at American University who specializes in copyright law: "I don't think this is an approach that is well calculated to create respect for the system."
The criminal sanctions embedded in the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act have been inching their way through Congress since
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I am sure that the law had a problem where pre-release material was not punishable, but the law being passed now ups the punishment dissproportionate to the crime and removes a critical piece of copyright law. They remove the requirement that you had to provide a copy to anyone. Now posession is illegal, it's just as bad as child porn in the legal system.
The only safe ground I see is the "shared folder" language. But what defines a shared folder? If you have a media server in your home with pre-release material that is shared to one or more other computers in your own home (not over the internet) are you still violating the law? Most likely...
The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act.
Would it have passed as easily if it was, say:
The Throw-Your-Teenager-In-Jail-For-Years Act
The Make-Millions-Of-People-Felons Act?
I for one am very happy about not living in the US, these days. The level of corruption in Congress and the Senate must be reaching truly mind-blowing proportions. I guess nobody really bothers to remember that they are there to represent the citizens, not the corporate interests? Scary.
now if someone shot senators and congressmen, would anyone really care?
this is utter BS. Its all about protecting greed and not "people". Will the US be so unstable from the .2% loss of profit (I truly feel that the numbers they generate are inflated 500%)???
isn't it the digital revolution?
i'd hate to be the target of such FECAL matters...
First the majority (slight, but still majority) re-elects an abominable administration, that has clearly shown over the first four years that personal profit and buddy - buddy economy are it's major concern, any real kind of national interests non - existent.
Keeping citizens in a permanent state of fear being the only way to keep going with it's 'grab all I can ever eat and then some, for me and my mega rich friends who happen to conveniently control all that's controllable' policy.
So start a couple of wars, ignore constitution, rest of the world, all nice and dandy, and please recycle your complaints yourselves, it's so much easier. And watch 'live' TV with a delay, although the broadcasters are our best friends, well, who knows, some loser might say something you want to protect your kids from hearing so you will not hear it either.
And
Misled souls which took Satan's filesharing scheme: ok, they'll burn in hell anyway, so 10 years of gang-banging is enough as an intro, as long as they give us their money money and money.
Someday, I hope to have my very own congressman in my pocket too.
This FECA bill has 4 cosponsors in the Senate--2 Republican, 2 Democratic.
And they passed this bill by *voice vote* in both houses. You know that probably means overwhelming support; otherwise, I'm sure someone would have objected to the voice vote procedure.
So, both sides are serving their entertainment industry masters on this one. . .again, our only hope for copyright sanity is the courts. So, that's what, probably at least three years before this gets bumped all the way to the Supreme Court?
It seems it's finally starting to happen--copyright infringement with no profit incentive is slowly becoming a crime instead of just a tort. This is probably just the first stage for a Hollywood-serving Congress. Somewhere, the idea of copyright being a balance of rights between authors, publishers, and consumers was clearly lost--the publishers are slowly grabbing all the power.
How utterly sad.
I can't believe people would allow a bill that mandated three years inprisonment for, say, shoplifting some chewing gum - and that is at least provably a crime that causes a set amount of loss for the shopkeeper, nobody has as yet proven that copying has a negative effect on media sales!
The bill won't do anything worthwhile to slow down copying, but it will allow the MPAA/RIAA etc to victimize a bunch of movie copying nerds legally.
A little perspective would be good here. Heck, at the moment, movie studios are making billions on DVD sales alone... without these draconian out-of-whack punishments.
This one is called the "Family Entertainment and Copyright Act."
All that they are missing is an 'L' at the end.
If everyone stops buying mainstram media for one year, it would be a different world!
Secondly, if sales go down, the MPAA/RIAA will just howl: "PIRACY! We need tougher punishments! Oh, and since we're selling less, we'll raise prises so we get more per unit!"
Of course, then they'll sell even less... but that is no doubt merely due to piracy, it has nothing to do with high prices for lousy product. ;)
They have ruled that exchange for other files equates to a monetary personal profit, thus sharing one file could legally expose you to being a felon with a possible prison term.
Personally, I think this is rather extreme. I would think that if you equated this kind of crime to hard crimes, something like assault which I believe is not a felon should be 5+ years in prison.
I would rather have the government taking hardened criminals off the street as felons then an aspiring college students.
It would also be nice to see the government attack the drug crime as aggressively as they are attacking P2P copyright infringement. Oh that's right, no big money is being lost by crack and heroine in our streets. Maybe we shouldn't worry all that much about drugs than. Let's just get rid of these felons that are sharing files.
Because in English, when you give three conditions with an or, you do write it in the form: [condition 1], [condition 2], or [condition 3].
And the law is listed as:
(a) [first condition];
(b) [second condition]; or
(c) [third condition].
So, it probably was meant to be interpreted as (a) or (b) or (c), not (a) and [(b) or (c)] as suggested. I guess we'll find out when the courts have to interpret this.
would be an awfully hard sell to get me to accept ANYHING
under these new circumstances.
Furtherore, I don't think the RIAA (and others) realize the extent
to which it's own overbearing tactics have harmed the industry.
We are dealing with a kind of technology that is based on copying. If takin to an extreme (wich is entirely possible), it could outlaw computers themselves.
P2P will end up being good for nothing more than porn. But then, at what point will people have to hire lawyers for intellectual property rights on their own nude photos? ....and what will that do to the camera industry?
With the wide ranging degrees that law gets interprited, it is just too dificult to say for sure that this will "only" be used for music and movies.
As for me lying, Look at Xandros:
-Open Circulation (HTTP download) $10
-Open Circulation (BitTorrent download) No charge
(from http://www.xandros.com/about/downloads.html)
Is xandros dragging the name of Linux through the mud?
When downloading files from busy servers, it's faster to use Bittorrent. It's how I got Slackware, as well as the free fanfilm "Star Wars: Revelations." (The Revelations site went down from too much traffic over HTTP, the torrents got faster with all that traffic)
I have a friend who tapes at taper-friendly concerts, and the 1 to 5 GB lossless audio file that is created can only be distributed through a very expensive server, or bittorrent for free.
As a small home-server admin, Bittorrent is also a blessing, greatly reducing bandwidth. Many people offering legal content on the internet ask you to use Bittorrent if you can before trying their FTP mirrors. World Of Warcraft, by Blizzard, was offering it's patches through Bittorrent for a while. I make my own computer music, and share it over Gnutella and Ares.
As a matter of fact, I have yet to use Bittorrent for an illegal use. Bittorrent isn't inherently bad, just like knives, which are lethal weapons, are also useful in many instances. (Please excuse this extreme analogy, but you were pretty extreme when you accused me of lying.)
It is impossible to steal with bittorrent. You are unable to deprive anyone of property. It is possible to infringe copyrights, but you can infringe copyrights over HTTP, FTP and IRC too. Technically only the uploader or distributor is infringing, they are the one making the copy. Is someone who buys bootleg CD's of the streets stealing? No. The person making the CD's is the one committing the crime, infringing on the copyright.
The penalties for downloading an album are much greater than for physically stealing the CD from wal-mart. In my opinion, this is Draconian. Your opinion is probably different, as well as unchangeable.
But please, don't drag the name of Bittorrent though the mud with your lies.
Your arguments are uncompelling, the main use for P2P is to violate the law. I could see if it was not the main (90%+) use of it but only a minor one, like your knife example.
The national article said the consumer need not do anything that they would see lower CD prices in the CD store. That never materialized as the prices still stayed at the status quo.
Next thing with the movie industry. Their greed when they first released DVD's and the prices were astronomical. They should be held responsible for price gouging. Then next look at the price it costs to see a movie. That is a wasting resource and it disappears after all time has transpired for that asset.
Next look at the price points today for these things and they still are in the stratosphere which had nothing to do with p2p file sharing.
Next thing is look at availability of a certain artist. For example I tried to get the double CD by the Dave Clark Five that I once owned but now I can't find it anywhere. Another Double CD of great songs I can't find is the Troggs greatest.
Next thing to think about is the cost of a concert ticket and merchandise accompanying it. There is a lot of capitalizing going on here as what has been taking place. I paid $5.00 for a Supertramp ticket in 1977. The concert was fantastic even though the venue was sectioned off by a large curtain due to poor turnout since not many people knew who they were at the time.
Next look at the oligopolies within the communications market for radio station ownwership and TV station consolidation.
Finally, look at the capabilities that were given to the end-users by the technology companies to exploit these technologies.
The ingenious software writers of p2p saw something that was not being filled. Finally isn't possible to record a movie from your TV,cable or satellite set-up and transfer that over to DVD for self-use. That is the emphaticness I say that as long as no revenue is being derived from those activities it should be permitted.
The pre-release well, go blame the insiders in the entertainment industry for that facility to be come available and not to forget our new international friends that we have begun trading with in recent years.
"Quote within website"
- Buy Used Books & Media
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by kieranmullen
April 23, 2005 1:48 AM PDT
- Go go amazon.com or ebay.cm and puchase quality used items. Better yet wait go to your local library and check out movies for free!
-
Reply to this comment
-
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- Public Library
-
by alawana
April 24, 2005 9:48 AM PDT
- Unfortunately, my library charges $2.00 a DVD or VHS for taking out to borrow and that adds up.
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See all 57 Comments >>Thanks anyway,
Very few movies I care about seeing again or owning copies.