Anti-P2P Law Looms over the Horizon 560
Adrian Lopez writes "MIT's Technology Review has a piece by Eric Hellweg about pending legislation known as the Intellectual Property Protection Act. According to Hellweg, IPPA could make it illegal to skip past commercials and could 'criminalize the currently legal act of using the sharing capacity of iTunes, Apple's popular music software program.' More information on IPPA is available at the Public Knowledge website."
Re:lots of other victimless crimes to worry about. (Score:2, Interesting)
Idea for a new slashdot section. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:lots of other victimless crimes to worry about. (Score:4, Interesting)
In the US there are more people in jail for marijuana related crimes than the entire prison population of 1970.
Google for it.
Fast-Forward is the flamebait of the package. (Score:5, Interesting)
The gameplan is: Lump some eight laws together in a package. Make one of them outrageous stupid. The stupid one gets all the flak, is pulled from the package and the rest sails straight trough congres.
far reaching consequences (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Enforcement? (Score:3, Interesting)
2. Determine that the
3. "netstat -an"
4. Record all connetions to 6889
5. Subpoena ISPs
6. Litigate
7. Rinse and repeat
Fascism (Score:2, Interesting)
Car crashes coming! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:International? (Score:2, Interesting)
It will end up like the drugs industry... (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact, I predict that some countries will eventually start to complain about the cost of the bandwidth needed to enjoy all the free stuff that is out there.
Need more organizations involved (Score:5, Interesting)
It's common knowledge that the government is slow and us internet folk are fast. Yet here we are seeing the opposite, the government is being fast, and freedom organizations of the internet are slow to pick up the fight.
Perhaps this suggests groups like EFF, et al need to re-examine how they react to legistlative bills. Not to sound over-dramatic, but I think they need an "army" of concerned citizens ready to start calling/writing their legistlators within 24 hours notice. Sort of like the minute-men of the American revolutionary war. Perhaps we even need a figuritive watch-tower to monitor congress and catch these bills in the very earliest stages.
In the bigger picture I'm an optimist and I hope to see over the next few years that the internet will help people get organized and bring strong pressure to bear on governments. We see how powerful the open-source model is, I'm waiting to see a similar phenomenom with politics. We see beginings of this with the Dean campaign and things like Groklaw but again I'm hoping this is just the begining.
I just wish there were more I could do personally.
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Re:lots of other victimless crimes to worry about. (Score:3, Interesting)
If I want to sit around and smoke weed all day, it is my business, and the government can't interfere. Until some "medicol doctar!!!1! kekeke!" diagnoses with me with a fancy new politically correct disease, now it's the governments duty to lock me up.
We had the article yesterday about internet porn. Apparantly getting a hardon is a medical condition caused by "erototoxins". So no first amendment rights for internet porn! It's an addictive disease causing substance just like crack.
Of course there are people engaged in self destructive behaviour who legitimately are mentally or physically ill. Our society as a whole doesn't have enough common sense to draw the line.
So lets criminalize Big Macs and titties, bring back prohibition. Umm, lets see, what else do people enjoy. Puppies, kitties, etc..
Business as usual (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that the language includes "promote the progress". It does not include provisions for deterring competition. Note also that the language includes "authors and inventors" and makes no provision for the corporate empires which manage to back authors and inventors into a financial corner to induce them to sign away all ownership.
As always, without anything in the Constitution to specifically address P2P, fast-forwarding of commercials, or regulation of content and viewing, we must defer to the 10th Amendment,"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
To preempt those communists in the crowd who would like to interpolate their favorite part of the Constitution to include their pet issue of the week I would like to remind everyone of Amendment 9,"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
So, there you have it. As always our federal politicians are wasting our taxpayer money debating issues which they have no authority, responsibility, or legal jurisdiction over. As always they will come up with mandates which will tax us further, hamper manufacturers, and prevent the consumers from getting what we pay for.
Don't blame me. I didn't vote for any of the current politicians. I also do more than my fair share attempting to educate those who don't have any clue what real freedom or liberty is.
Bring on the trolls.
Re:lots of other victimless crimes to worry about. (Score:3, Interesting)
What do you have against Pfizer?
Re:lots of other victimless crimes to worry about. (Score:2, Interesting)
Real life commercial watching (Score:5, Interesting)
When Im forced to use a "hostile television" I notice a few things:
1. THe SAME commercial gets played over and over. I was watching the Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle live and saw the same truck commercial five or six times. Same with the rest. So skipping something you've seen is hardly costing anyone money.
2. Commercials have zero information quantity. That is to say they are all emotion and no logic. Whats the MPG of that truck? What is its safety ratings? I dunno, all I know is a busty woman is leaning on it on a backdrop of some colorado mountain scene with a flag somewhere on the screen. Or as Dr. Rappielle says "It appeals to the reptilian brain." [anecdotage.com] I'm not a reptile and I like making informed consumer decisions (usually).
I guess the term "victim" here is what is being debated. A market shift to different modes of operation isn't victimizing its the future! Its why we have free markets. So companies can adapt. The old advertisers will be replaced with the new.
Re:Enforcement? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do we have 35 million drug users in prison? No. Instead, they selectively send those they dislike the most to prison, and let the rest churn through misdemeanors in court, creating a large dsyfunctional rehab industry and a permanent underclass.
The same will happen with IP infringement.
Re:lots of other victimless crimes to worry about. (Score:1, Interesting)
I remember an old documentary (Score:4, Interesting)
This has been an issue for a long time around the world and every single time it is done the powers that be insure us that it will not go out of control.
lucky for the dutch we are several years behind the rest of the world so if we want to see the future we take a ticket to the US of A.
Far from the cafeteria being run by McD or books on economy being printed by Wall Street the docu saw a far far worse case.
Students were made to watch simple commercials on tv. Don't watch the commercials and you can't attend classes.
So for those worried about ordinary tv forcing you to watch commercials, you are a bit slow. Far worse has already been tried.
P2P is not bad (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that history would teach us that when a popular activity is outlawed, that activity doesn't go away it moves underground. Look at the roaring 20's and the temperance movement that caused prohibition. Outlawing alcohol didn't make it go away, it just drove it underground and made common criminals wealthy and willing to protect their enterprise with guns and a little enterprise called "Murder Inc."
A similar corelation can be made with illicit drugs today; Crack, crank, heroin, and pot are all available on street corners in every major city! Those gangsters also protect thier illicit interests with guns and murder.
One has to wonder if the drug situation were dealt with a little differently, if things wouldn't be better? Please note I am not being pro-drug here. But I have to wonder if cocaine and other drugs were available to adults in controlled stores if we wouldn't have less crime and about the same number of adicts? If that was the case, wouldn't it be a success? Our prisons would be less crowded and we would probably have less crime.
By now some of you are thinking I'm a lunatic, that P2P software is different from drugs. Please believe me when I say I understand that. But regulation brings with it unanticipated and often disasterous consiquences. It makes criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens and, it puts the country that regulates it at a competitive disadvantage to the countries that don't. All in all, I see this kind of conservitive over regulation as a "bad thing."
Also, FTP can and frequently is used "peer to peer," so are IM programs: Are all of these going to be legislated away because of some short-sighted law? Is this really appropriate legislation - aren't there already plenty of laws that address copyright violations? I can't see how true American's can't agree!
Trade blocks (Score:5, Interesting)
It won't be too difficult. The standard thing that the US does in this situation is to say "implement our laws or we won't trade with you, we'll tell everyone else not to trade with you, and we'll make it even more difficult for your citizens to travel via or into the US".
It's surprisingly effective, because they only need to actually have it enforced in western countries, and such countries typically rely on trade with the US either directly or indirectly.
It's really not so surprising that corporates (most obviously Microsoft) get away with what they do in the US, because the Federal Government leads by example. The essential foreign policy of the United States is to use its power/monopoly in one region to lock everyone else out of another region.
Having said this, I come from a smaller nation (New Zealand) that has decided to not support the US on several occasions, including various nuclear issues and the Iraq invasion. The result is that our government is now pursuing a Free Trade Agreement with China, because the US won't speak to us. I'm not sure which is worse.
We are comparitively lucky in many ways out here, though. I won't forget that.
Re:H.R. 4077 Establishes the National Tree (Oak) (Score:5, Interesting)
It also creates all sorts of back-room deal making. Basically, "I'll vote for your bill if you add this pork for my local constituancy". It'a also why attack ads can say "So and so voted against mothers and apple pie!". What they really voted against was some other thing the bill, the "mom and applie pie" was added on.
It's really really stupid, and it's very American.
Burn everything. (Score:3, Interesting)
Idea for a new slashdot [Legal] section (Score:2, Interesting)
And last since this is a copyright story. Here's a book to read.
Patent, Copyright, & Trademark: An Intellectual Property* Desk Reference by Attorneys Stephen Elias and Richard Stim. 7th edition.
*Note to audiance, two attorneys using the term "property". Read and find out why.
Re:International? (Score:1, Interesting)
It's still the land of the free, I guess; just some people are more free than others
Freedom of Speech (Score:2, Interesting)
Clearly technology will make copying easier. Technology will hamper the ability of people to profit from their own creativity. The time will come when computers produce better compilations of knowledge and art than people. At this point information may as well be free because I can click on the button labelled "Create" and receive a dump of information that I can enjoy.
I suggest that we stop using P2P for mere sharing of files that "someone has copied/ripped from somewhere" - especially data that was originally sold rather than freely distributed. P2P is somewhat corrupting, leading to laziness. Instead, consider the success of the free software movement where cooperation produces quality material available at no charge. The time has come for technology to assist us in the production of free art. Look at the incredible special effects done in movies by computers. Well, we can apply worldwide grid computing to rendering free movies, as well as other noble applications such as scientific calculations.
You can bet that prices for data will drop in the years to come. P2P is a bizarre phenomenon meant for surreptitious file copying - if information was to be made available with no qualms, it would be on a website. Valuable information with heavy traffic is mirrored legitimately. If you have the right to freedom of speech, put your money where your mouth is, and output some free stuff for us.
isn't this the whole internet? (Score:3, Interesting)