Real Nasty Copyright Bill Passes House Panel
Will the madness ever end? Declan reports that the House intellectual property subcommittee (a subsidiary of the RIAA whose only requirement is to never have taken a copyright law course) has approved the "Piracy Deterrence and Education Act" (PDEA [pdf]).
The PDEA would allow 1) the FBI the powers to demand private information from Internet service providers (this is necessary because the courts can not be trusted to divest Americans of their privacy rights and to protect greedy corporate music executives); 2) punishes internet users who makes available $1,000 in copyrighted materials with prison terms of up to three years and fines of up to $250,000 (because apparently existing criminal copyright law is not sufficient); this provision also provides for strict liability meaning that "prosecutors would not have to prove that $1,000 in copyrighted materials were downloaded--they would need only to show that those files had been publicly accessible in a shared folder."
Declan goes on to state that "Congress has pressured the department to use the No Electronic Theft Act to jail file swappers, no such prosecutions have taken place so far...."
see: House panel approves copyright bill
see also: Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the creation of a task force on copyright violations. [press release | via]
The PDEA would allow 1) the FBI the powers to demand private information from Internet service providers (this is necessary because the courts can not be trusted to divest Americans of their privacy rights and to protect greedy corporate music executives); 2) punishes internet users who makes available $1,000 in copyrighted materials with prison terms of up to three years and fines of up to $250,000 (because apparently existing criminal copyright law is not sufficient); this provision also provides for strict liability meaning that "prosecutors would not have to prove that $1,000 in copyrighted materials were downloaded--they would need only to show that those files had been publicly accessible in a shared folder."
Declan goes on to state that "Congress has pressured the department to use the No Electronic Theft Act to jail file swappers, no such prosecutions have taken place so far...."
see: House panel approves copyright bill
see also: Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the creation of a task force on copyright violations. [press release | via]
