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New Congressional Bill Makes DMCA Look Tame
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Apr 24, 2006 04:25 AM
from the things-that-make-you-go-hmmm dept.
from the things-that-make-you-go-hmmm dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Representative Lamar Smith is sponsoring the Intellectual Property Protection Act. The new bill is designed to give the Justice Department 'tools to combat IP crime' which which are used to 'quite frankly, fund terrorism activities,' according to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Among the provisions is lowering the standards for 'willful copyright violation' and increasing the corresponding prison term to 10 years." More information is also available at publicknowledge.org.
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Thank you Lamar (What an appropriate name) (Score:5, Informative)
Reading Open Secret's page [opensecrets.org] about him, you see the usual line up of Legal firms, Content & Tech companies. Just the people who stand to benefit from this legislation the most.
I really don't understand why people vote for politicians who are bought & sold so easily (and cheaply).
Re:Thank you Lamar (What an appropriate name) (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Thank you Lamar (What an appropriate name) (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Thank you Lamar (What an appropriate name) (Score:5, Insightful)
You can. You can resort to blaming it on child pornography [slashdot.org] instead. Works just as well!
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Re:Thank you Lamar (What an appropriate name) (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless I am mistaken, this is not retorical, it is a clear statement that piracy is being used to fund terrorism.
Frankly, someone in the US gov is taking lessons from the el presidente Antonio Bliar's book that any lie is OK provided that it is for the "just cause". Can we see some damn proof of at least one instance when this has happened?
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Re:Bought and sold so cheaply (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry - I find that argument quite irritating.
You have plenty of choice. A vote for a third candidate does not throw your vote away - even if that candidate is not elected, an increase in other party's showing sends a message to the incumbrents.
Voter turnout is low for this among other reasons.
Voter turnout is low because of stupidity & apathy. People need to understand that you do not have to get your party voted in to make a difference
Say you're a libertarian (I'm not), you feel that there is no point voting as your candidate will never get elected, but if the candidates percentage of the vote is 1% one year, then 1.2%, then 3%, etc, the major parties will notice that & attempt to make their policies closer to the libertarian (or whatever) ideal.
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Re:Bought and sold so cheaply (Score:5, Insightful)
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The definition of terrorism (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me guess, everyone opposing this bill will be labelled as 'unpatriotic', 'pro-terrorism' etc?!?
Since 9/11 (Score:5, Insightful)
During a speech in November, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales endorsed the idea and said at the time that he would send Congress draft legislation. Such changes are necessary because new technology is "encouraging large-scale criminal enterprises to get involved in intellectual-property theft," Gonzales said, adding that proceeds from the illicit businesses are used, "quite frankly, to fund terrorism activities."
What's being suggested is that MP3 downloaders are directly responsible for suicide bombings! We know how rediculous this is but...
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Knowledge based economy (Score:5, Insightful)
You decide your economy will be 'knowledge' based, rather than making and selling things.
You create a bunch of artificial rights, that concentrate money in the hands of a few companies and remove them from everyone else.
But it doesn't work, your economy becomes uncompetitive, runs up a huge trade deficit. The companies become fat and lazy and the world doesn't buy their shit products.
Your currency can't sustain it and starts to fall.
You have to grab assets, oil! Iraq here we come, oil can save us.
But there isn't enough oil in Iraq and they don't elect the leader you chose for them.
What can you do to make this knowledge based economy work? Try bigger penalties, more spying on the population, 10 years in prison for minor infringement. Force through treaties on trade partners, desparate measures are called for to prevent the USA economy from collapsing the way the Soviet Union did when it spent too much money.
Anybody else upset. (Score:5, Interesting)
organisation (SIAA) that supports this bill. I know
I will now be recommending any other linux vendor for
enterprise support.
Re:Anybody else upset. (Score:5, Interesting)
Support http://www.ipaction.org/ [ipaction.org] - it might be one of the only practical ways to get something done about this kind of nonsense.
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Now computers will be illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
These people dont have sense of proportion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:These people dont have sense of proportion (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. They're smart and know very well what they're doing. The problem are the uninformed, uneducated masses who rush to vote for them as soon as any proposed new law has either "terrorism" or "children" attached to it.
They're taking advantage of this, and there's nothing you can do to avoid it, other than informing and educating as many people as you can. Do you think it's a coincidence that the education budget in the US is being cut?
I pity you Americans. Your country is going down the drain.
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Re:These people dont have sense of proportion (Score:5, Insightful)
Solution: kill the man who saw you steal that 20 bucks worth of software, if you think you have a 50% chance of not getting caught.
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Everything against the benefit of the few (Score:5, Interesting)
I guess that at this point there is not much pouting is going to do to help!
How to control the populace (Score:5, Informative)
2) Trawl for lawbreakers at your leisure.
3) Pick 'em up when it's suitable.
Someone needs a whack with a cluestick. It's not the way to run a (decent) country.
Scare Tactics (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry about that, but this is going too far. Terrorism and child pornography are bad, yes, but attempts to prevent them are not worth the loss of our rights. In the other story about this kind of thing, I forgot who said it, but it went something like this - "Terrorism and Child Porn are the root passwords to the constitution". It's a sad time for the land of the free.
What causes terrorism (Score:5, Insightful)
WarMongering Idiots on one side and Religious Fundamentalist Psychos on the other cause terrorism
So how about the WMI&RFP restriction Act ?
Why not just get it over and done with... (Score:5, Insightful)
First age long prison sentences, then "convicted felon", "sex offender"... I'm sure it won't be long before they invent a "pirate registry" too. I read in the recent discussion about kiddie porn about a woman who had been convicted at 10 for "molesting" her younger siblings and had to stay on the sex offenders' registry until she was 37. I call that "fucked for life", why not put a horrified little ten year old girl in the chair while you're at it.
There's always been a good principle in law enforcement that the penalty should fit the crime. In the US, it seems to me that the current idea is "Ok so we got a million criminals and only catch hundred, but we're going to make up for it by making those hundred pay for it." as if that would make things just. That's not justice, that is simply revenge, even if it's incorporated in law. Because you can't reach those you want to reach, you lash out at those few you can. That still doesn't make it just for those that get away nor for those that get caught.
Re:Fund terrorism? (Score:5, Funny)
imagine all the extra time they need not spend on system administration:
obviously they would have more time actually planning terroristic attacks!
Would be a thought though: give all the Al Quaida's of this world the newest of newest of computers
with all the newest propriotory software, just to see them fail as a terroristic
club seeing that they spend all their time actually getting their systems up and running.
We would see newsitems like:
ThisJustIn: Bin Laden proclaims next suicide hit to occur moments after Vista finally released.
Roel
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Re:give me example (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, and even if you did the causality is really spurious. Real IP crime, by which I don't mean filesharing but counterfeit goods sold for profit, is a way to earn money. Terrorism is as far as I can tell a money sink, it costs money. Even if you find some case somewhere that says "Pirate funded terrorism", is it more common than "Regular worker funded terrorism out of his paycheck" or "Pirate funded luxurious lifestyle"? I think not.
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Re:Amerika (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, the old "new" constitution is dead in the water right now thanks to French and Dutch voters. ATM the EU is seriously annoying Microsoft over its overly militant use of IP to squash competition, whereas we all know how it worked out in the US.
I wouldn't count the old EU out just right now.
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Re:Amerika (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardly something I'd say would be offensive.
It is patently offensive (no pun intended), if you compare it with the corresponding paragraph in the US constitution [cornell.edu]:
You note that the US text severly limits scope of intellectual property:- it is limited in time
- it should only be upheld if it helps foster progress
Both safeguards are lacking from the EU constitution. The sentence about Intellectual property is incredibly short and blunt, without any ifs and buts.The IP article in the EU constitution paves the road to perpetual copyrights and software patents.
Most other stipulations in the EU constitution have all kinds of exceptions where the rights granted should not apply. Not so intellectual property (which is not even defined! ... and so could conceivably be redefined in the future to include all kinds of corporate rights of which aren't even yet included into today's nightmares...)
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