News.com
Gonzales proposes new crime: 'Attempted' copyright infringement
Posted by Declan McCullagh
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 prerelease piracy.
Here are some of the bullets on this bit of Big Brother Legislation:
Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright
-Don't even think about burning that new Nine Inch Nails album...Oh, you did think about it? Turn around sir and face the vehicle, hands behind your back.
Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software-
-Because any accountant using a burned copy of "Turbo Tax" should have his testicles fed to him.
Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America
-Hey, Sony? Yeah, we got those copies of Spider Man 3 off the street, your kids are safe now.
Allow computers to be seized more readily
-Terrorists? What terrorists?! We've gotta get those God damned bloggers behind bars....fucking free speech my ass.
I was going to keep this short because according to E-Blogger, we bloggers have the attention spans of gnats on speed, but oh well, it's my blog and I can bitch if I want to. All kidding aside,I can understand the film and music bigwigs trying to protect their interests, but in this digital age it's kind of like the movie and film industry are the old couple that still keeps their money under the mattress. I know that duplicating copywrigthed material without permission is against the law, and I don't condone it. I don't buy burned movies, or illegally download music. Honestly. I even explained to my kids how buying burned movies financially hurts the ones who made it, and is just plain illegal. But this? This bit of despotic legislation smacks of a smoke screen to further dismantle our right to privacy. We have to draw the line, people. Politicians are public servants, and we too often forget that. They serve at our whim, and our tax dollars pay their salaries.
What's next? Is Tom Cruise going to come crashing through my window the next time I think about kicking my neigbors teeth in because their fucking Pomeranian won't stop barking at every thing that passes by?
It also seems more than a bit convenient that this comes when Alberto Gonzalez is at the front the scandal concerning the firing of District Attorneys.....Slipping this legislation through while everyone is looking in the other direction?.....Well played, Al.
I'd like to open this up to discussion for anyone that would like to.
