Gonzales proposes new crime: "Attempted" copyright infringement
Submitted by libervisco on Tue, 2007-05-15 17:58.
copyright
"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including "attempts" to commit piracy.
"To meet the global challenges of IP crime, our criminal laws must be kept updated," Gonzales said during a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Monday.
The Bush administration is throwing its support behind a proposal called the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which is likely to receive the enthusiastic support of the movie and music industries and would represent the most dramatic rewrite of copyright law since a 2005 measure dealing with pre-release piracy. " -- Read more
No comments necessary. If there was this much effort put into preventing the real stealing (shoplifting, car stealing etc.) where would we be.
How are they going to tell
How are they going to tell the difference between attempting to infringe copyright and attempting to play a song on software of which the DRM key is no longer approved because someone else cracked it?
Also:
Wiretaps would be authorized for investigations of Americans who are "attempting" to infringe copyrights.
In other words, if you mix a CD for mom, or you try it and fail because of DRM, that means it's legal for your wires to be tapped.
Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software. Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life. During a conference call, Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.
So, if license renewal fails because of a technical problem which cannot be reproduced (this WILL happen), causing the hospital software to be disabled, the sysadmin faces imprisonment for life. Aren't we barking up the wrong tree here? It should be illigal for software to contain self-destruct code if lives depend on it. Bug-free software doesn't exist, so there always is a risk of the software self-destructing when it shouldn't.
These proposals are insane, and if they are accepted I will give up all hope for the USA. When laws are introduced that make it possible to interpret things at least 80% of the population does as crimes bad enough for wiretapping, I don't believe the illusion of democracy can last much longer.