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US To Push Criminalization of IP Violations
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Jan 10, 2005 01:39 PM
from the god-bless-america dept.
from the god-bless-america dept.
Dr.Hair writes "
Soon to be ex-Secretary of Commerce Don Evans speaks out on 'piracy' just prior to his last trip to China for negotiations. 'That means criminalizing the laws as opposed to (having) just civil laws...You've got to start putting people in jail.'
The article points out that this lust for prosecutions extends from Evans to his successor, the American Chamber of Commerce, and the US Senate. "
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Right Alongside (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Right Alongside (Score:5, Insightful)
Good to know where you have people.
Either that, or we'll just cut health care to build new prisons!
Parent
Re:Right Alongside (Score:5, Interesting)
This is really bad, because it takes away the one power a judge really has - the power to look at the merits of a case and decide an appropriate sentence.
But, I read a story of some guy who was charged with disturbing the peace (he cussed out some kid working at a movie theater), and as his "third strike", he's now a lifer. His original two charges were nothing major, a couple assault charges that could probably be chalked up to drunken assholery.
The bitch of it is, we all have to pay for all these convicts.
Parent
Re:Right Alongside (Score:5, Insightful)
And the funny part is, in neither case was it the chucklehead's first brush with the law.
You get drunk and assault somebody, it's the same as if you were sober and assaulted somebody. You are still a fucking violent offender.
Parent
Re:Not even close. (Score:4, Insightful)
Get real yourself. You drink, you drive, you kill someone, the charge can still be homicide:
The most important single fact to remember about intoxication is that in most courts, intoxication will not negate the element of recklessness. In other words, if a particular element of a crime can be satisfied by a mental state of recklessness, D's intoxication will be irrelevant. Responsibility [lawspirit.com]
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Re:Right Alongside (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Right Alongside (Score:5, Informative)
Now, Class A misdemeanors are, as a general rule, fairly serious offenses, seeing as how they are punishable by up to a year in jail and/or a fine of up to $4,000. Texas's Class A misdemeanors include Aggravated Assault, Negligent Homicide, and such friendly acts as Unlawful Restraint (a 'minor' form of kidnapping) and various theft/fraud offenses involving property having $500-$1500 in value.
If someone is facing trial for a fifth offense for crimes of this nature maybe they SHOULD face a life sentence. Speaking in the abstract I really can't say.
Parent
Life in Jail for nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone could go to jail for life without parole for:
1) Getting into a fight in the schoolyard when they're 16...
2) Getting caught with the microscopic resin of cannibus on a pipe that they found on the ground..
3) Listening to music on an iPod or Walkman...
Of course, it goes without saying that no rich, white, republican kid will ever be bothered by this type of insanity that passes for justice in the USA. Only blacks, latinos, and middle-class whites will be subjected to the guiding light of the American justice system.
It also goes without saying that the legislators who are pushing for these insane laws to be passed are being paid thousands of dollars in bribes ('campaign contributions') from the private prison corporations who will be making $30,000 a year for each new 'dangerous criminal' serving life-in-prison-without-parole in a corporate prison.
If you are a citizen of the European Community or some other stable country with a basic tradition of justice, don't come to the USA. Don't even visit here. It's just too dangerous. The republicans have just gone fucking nuts. Visit Canada (in the summer) or Mexico (in the winter). Avoid the USA. Seriously.
Parent
Re:Life in Jail for nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Unless the crime is especially heinous and results in trial as an adult (e.g. premeditated murder), the schoolyard fight would be expunged at age 21.
2) In most places, a first offense for possession of small amounts of marijuana is a misdemeanor.
3) I don't see anyone suggesting that possession of copyrighted works be criminalized. Hell, it's not even an actionable civil issue in the U.S. The only thing that's going to possibly get you in trouble is distribution.
Well, since nobody--black, white, rich, or poor--will be subjected to the insane suggestion you make above, there's not really anything more I can add to this.
Well, since most states don't even have privately owned prisons, I somehow doubt Congress is cooking up laws aimed solely at providing more inmates to the private prison system.
You obviously know nothing about how things really work in the U.S. If you seriously think Mexico is a safer place to travel than the U.S., you're the one who's gone "fucking nuts".
Parent
Speaking of "the bitch" (Score:4, Funny)
Cellmate B: downloaded Eminem on BitTorrent.
Figure it out.
Parent
A minor point (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
An economy built on theft? Step right up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, the irony [globalpolicy.org].
Parent
Re:An economy built on theft? Step right up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Slavery was wrong. We did something about it, losing untold thousands of lives in the process. But in Africa, you've got it all still happening, and some people seem to think that we've got no moral standing to complain about it or point it out. The people who owned slaves, or fought to keep them, had no moral standing. But that was in the past. There were Germans who killed millions of people... but that's not who's running the show there now, either.
I don't steal IP - I create it for a living. I've got the right to seek intervention when someone steals it from me, and the obligation to see to it that the fastest growing ecomomy in the world (China) doesn't come apart at the seams because it's built on a stolen-IP house of cards. It's not irony, it's called getting your act together and learning from the past. Our laws are still muddled on this front, but at least there's something there to work on. Much of the rest of world isn't muddled: they're completely clear on their willingness to institutionally rob programmers, engineers, musicians, architects, and every other creative professional blind. Industries in China and Korea steal from each other, too, but there's not enough industrial innovation there yet for them to really want to change their ways in their own defense.
You want irony? Irony is that if China were to truly stop IP theft, people there would be forced to really, really innovate and compete - and then we'd have a different, possibly bigger problem: 1.3 billion (!) people gunning for us on a level playing field. But that's the sort of confrontation that works out better for everyone. Rational competition works, but only when we're all playing by something like the same rules.
Parent
Re:Right Alongside (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Right Alongside (Score:5, Funny)
Pirate: "20 years. The new Britney Spears album."
Parent
Re:Right Alongside (Score:5, Funny)
Pothead: "Hey guys, what are you in for?"
Pirate: "20 years. The new Britney album."
Dad: "25 years. I stargazed with my kid." [slashdot.org]
Way to go America!
Parent
The Evolution of Crime (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, that's fuckin' great -- IP violaters and pot smokers, cheek to jowl in the showers.
God only knows what kind of criminal masterminds are breeding in those prisons
-kgj
Parent
Re:Right Alongside (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Right Alongside (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, if you use a P2P program and upload a single file and download a single file, you are now deemed to qualify as a commercial enterprize engaging in industrial scale copyright infringment for financial gain. Criminal Infringement.
But heay, on the bright side the penaltys [cornell.edu] for only uploading a single copy of some song the maximum sentence is just a year in prison. You have to hit "at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500" before you qualify for 5 years in prison.
On the other hand you can get 10 years in prison if it is your second offence, say uploading a single copy of the copyrighted song "Happy Birthday".
Yep, get caught for uploading and downloading a single song, then get caught uploading and downloading a single song a second time, and you are eligible to 10 years in prison.
-
Parent
Why should cybercrimes be different? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is breaking into a person's server or blogsite and messing with the contents any different from breaking in to a person's house/business and messing around? In both cases peoples "space" and privacy have been violated.
Is defacing a website any different from spraying graffiti on someones walls?
Parent
Re:Why should cybercrimes be different? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. The punishments are different. If you are caught spraypainting a wall you might get fined or be forced to clean it up. If you deface a web site you might get jailed longer then a rapist.
Parent
Re:It's all about context. (Score:5, Insightful)
I still think "hard" drugs, like crack and heroin, should be illegal.
Alcohol can kill its users with an overdose (or choking on vomit.)
Alcohol can kill its chronic users (cirrhosis, heart disease, etc.)
Users of alcohol can kill others via drunk driving or other acts done while under the influence.
Users of alcohol can have deformed babies (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.)
What can other drugs do that is in any way worse?
Parent
Sauce for the Goose (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sauce for the Goose (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Copyright infringment already criminal in the UK (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should China want to stifle it's own economy just to please Bush?
lovely. (Score:3, Funny)
hmmmmmmmmmm (Score:5, Funny)
This IP crap is becoming old... (Score:3, Insightful)
The socialists are right on this one.
And don't even give me that crap about the poor programmer who is trying to earn a living. I, too, work in IT and have a family to support. In the end, IP serves to hurt the people rather than help them. The only people it helps are the shareholders and lawyers who prosecute and defend.
Re:This IP crap is becoming old... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if you've been paying attention, but the companies took over the government some time ago. Both of our USA political parties jump to meet the needs of business. Voters are bought with lies broadcast in the media (and paid for by business).
You purpose in life here is to work hard (or go into debt) so that you can buy as much stuff as possible.
Any questions?... get back to work and stop wasting time.
Parent
This is not necessarily bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, as long as politicians are getting big contributions from the entertainment industry, the outlook for this kind of law is not so good because the real motivations are hidden and corrupt.
Don't for a minute believe they won't do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
When they come to lock you up, no one is going to stand up for you. Maybe the EFF will send you a Christmas card in prison.
The propaganda has worked. No one in the public at large has any notion of the rights and freedoms they are in the process of losing, let alone what they mean.
Society is 100% ready to accept zero-privacy, expensive, addled DRM solutions. They will have no sympathy for anyone doing a 4-8 stretch for "downloading." With one deft push from Comrade Gonzales, they will all line up to throw tomatoes at "developers of illegal software."
My advice for you all is to read early accounts of the rise of the Soviet state, and/or especially the transition years in Eastern Europe. Totalitarianism has a very recognizable feel, even in the very beginning, before you can barely feel its grip, you can smell it's breath long before it starts to squeeze.
Re:Don't for a minute believe they won't do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mankind got by for countless milennia before this whole concept of "paying for music" started. Need I remind you that all over the world, there are these people called "musicians" who generally like to play on these things called "instruments" and produce noise called "music."
Music isn't the issue. What is at issue is the insane idea that you can own music, and that your grandchildren can live off of performances that were recorded before they were even born, long after you are dead.
Destroy the music industry, and music will survive. Indeed, it would probably do a bit better. Folk Festivals of late have devolved into drunk people covering the Beatles.
Parent
misleading (Score:4, Informative)
In China (Score:5, Informative)
While it might be a short leap for the same people to start calling for the criminalization of copyright infringement in the US, that's not what we're talking about here.
Put everyone in jail! (Score:4, Insightful)
They call it the Department of Corrections, which is pure political bullshit. They've never corrected anything.
It's necessary to remove violent offenders from society for societies safety, but repeat offenses are high. Being in prison doesn't "teach" or "fix" or correct the problem.
Yet in America, we've set the system up so that virtually every last citizen belongs behind bars under the law.
We can start jailing kids for running kazaa, and it won't solve the problem.
It'll just increase the tax burden for the handful of people who manage to not get caught.
Everyone has done one of the following: tried drugs, infringed a copyright, exceeded the speed limit, drank alcohol underage, bought a violent video game for someone under 18, etc...
Why don't we just run razor wire along the coasts and borders, and declare everyone incarcerated?
Re:Put everyone in jail! (Score:5, Funny)
I have no doubt that should this come to pass there is a sizeable group here who would firmly believe that we have finally tried the rest of the world, found them guilty, and thrown them in the clink.
Parent
Re:Put everyone in jail! (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone has done one of the following: tried drugs, infringed a copyright, exceeded the speed limit, drank alcohol underage, bought a violent video game for someone under 18, etc...
Your point is well taken but in most locations none of the things you listed will currently get you jail time. An important broken link in your criminalization chain is the police. The job of the police is to enforce the law through arrests and investigations. They only enforce a very small subset of the laws because the police don't really have much better of an idea what the laws are than the average citizen. They enforce the laws their bosses tell them to, and don't bother digging through law books for other things that are criminal.
I've always taken issue with the staggering number of incomprehensible, obscure, and contradictory laws. We certainly are all breaking laws on the books every day. Every child in our country knows that it is not fair to be punished for something that one was not informed was against the rules. If you tell any man, woman, or child that all the rules they need to follow are gathered in the three sets of legal volumes, consisting of millions of pages, stored in three different locations and written in a mishmash of english, old english, and latin, every one of them will realize the ridiculousness of being held responsible for breaking one of those rules. Instead we all follow a "common law" that is an amalgamation of rumors, common sense, and here-say. If the television show "Law and Order" were to start making up new laws and showing them being enforced, half the police officers and citizens in the country would start believing that they actually existed. Heck, some of the lawyers would buy it too. Hammurabi wrote his laws on a pillar in the center of town. We can't even find a list of ours in plain English. No one knows what all the laws are, and no one can be held morally responsible for violating them. Until the system changes drastically, ignorance is indeed an excuse.
I happen to know the legal expert on weapons in my state. He is a very successful lawyer who specializes in cases of concealed weapons and weapons violations. I asked him one day if it was legal to carry a pocket knife, and if so, how large. His answer, "No one knows." There are three contradictory laws listing legal blade lengths and one that specifically guarantees everyone the right to carry a hunting knife without specifying what that is. Other laws say that you can carry a blade so long as it is hidden, not hidden, shorter than a given length, or not for malicious purposes. His legal advice was that it is fine to carry a knife, but to be safe you should carry one shorter than 2.75 inches and keep it concealed. That violates two laws, but is in accordance with three. If it ever goes to court he claims that he will not have any problem showing that the laws contradict, and thus can't be enforced, which he has done in the past.
And that is a perfect example of why laws or more or less arbitrary and not worth looking up for a layman.
Parent
Re:Put everyone in jail! (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Put everyone in jail! (Score:4, Informative)
Sure it does. It maintains status quo for those who make the rules and those that pay for the rules to be written -- rich people and corporations.
The US currently incarcerates more people per capita than any other country. To me, its an indicator of how fragile our society really is. I mean apartheid was maintained with fewer people in prison than the US society. I believe that its almost 2% of the US total population is either incarcerated or on parole or somehow else "in the system".
Its also interesting that jails and prisons are pretty much populated with poor uneducated people. A bright person with money can be much more successful than one without those qualities to either avoid getting busted in the first place or escape incarceration in the event of getting busted. Regardless of the truth of OJ's guilt or innocence, he would be in prison if he were not a multimillionaire.
What's sick is that we simply put up with this crap. Americans used to be headstrong people that stood up for their beliefs. We came here mostly due to persecution in one form of another. We used to have sayings like "taxation without representation" and whatnot. I guess one thing that makes these control efforts more successful today is that they do tend to prey on uneducated under-financed individuals.
The perfect example is incarceration for "illegal" drug possession. More lower middle class white people do drugs than any other group, but jails and prisons are predominately occupied by lower class non-whites.
Parent
Imagine the reaction (Score:5, Insightful)
Rules that are meant to be broken. (Score:5, Insightful)
The most useful kinds of rules are the ones that everyone violates, and that are therefore unworkable. In other words - rules are made to be broken.
Great. (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, kids, it's all about being tough on crime. If, for some inexplicable reason, crime continues to exist--you're simply not being tough enough. Throw more people in prison; make the sentences longer to keep 'em there. To hell with reform; make sentences punitive and harsh for the sake of scaring people straight. It'll work eventually, right?
1 out of 37 Americans have served time in prison. Our incarceration rates continue to skyrocket. How much more will it take for people to throw their hands in the air and say "Enough!"?
Re:Great. (Score:4, Insightful)
Things like incarceration are driven by ideology, not rationality. The U.S. has a high incarcertation rate because a majority or sizable minority of Americans really believe against all evidence that putting people in jail is an effective means to combat crime. It just "feels right" or "makes sense" that the threat of jail will reduce crime.
Once you realize that this is an ideological or religious argument (epistemologically ideology and religion are indistinguishable) you'll realize that no practical consequences will ever have an effect on people's beliefs in this regard. The fact that Christ never comes back doesn't deter Christians from believing he's going to Real Soon Now. The fact that non-democratic socialist countries were abject economic failures didn't stop ideologues from claiming that non-democratic socialism was more efficient.
So until there is a major ideological shift in the U.S., and parents start teaching their children that the threat of jail doesn't have a big effect on crime, but reduction in poverty does, we'll continue to see the "paradox" of high crime and high incarceration rates in the U.S.
--Tom
Parent
US gov works for the corps..newsflash? (Score:4, Insightful)
First off all, I have difficulties with their acclaimed 'stealing' of music/movies. As far as I know, stealing implies that the one that has been stolen has been derived of something. When you take a copy, you do not take the original away, thus they have not 'lost' anything. They might claim that they loose money when ppl d/l music, but even that is far from certain.
Not only is it not shown statistically to have had that effect (they didn't even show a correlation thusfar - see aussie music-news - let alone a causality). Furthermore, in an individual case, they would have to show they actually lost revenue. Which is far from said, because I sure know some guys who d/l music, but would NEVER have bought that music if they were unable to d/l it. So, how did the RIAA/IFPI loose revenue, exactly? And if they didn't lose anything, how can the term 'stealing' apply?
It would still be copyright-infringement, ofcourse, but that's another matter. I think maybe it's time we went beyond our current system of copyrights and walk into the era of cyberspace. With the industrial revolution, patents and copyrights knew a high flight, maybe it's time to let it leave and try something new? Maybe something in the lines of this: fairshare (http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*
And don't worry, contrary to what the RIAA claims, musicians will not starve to death, and music-making will not stop. We had music long before we had copyrights, and we will have music long after copyrights have vanished from the scene.
And lastly, it's something that *can not* be stopped. P2P progs and their development act as organisms that follow the darwinian rules of survival. When Napster was 'killed' by the RIAA, immediately others (like kazaa) took over, being more resistent to attacks from the RIAA&co. Whenever kazaa will be shut down, others again will take over. When endusers are targeted, systems that protect the user will become dominant (like FreeNet).
It really is a lost cause. But then again, they are not truelly battling for the survival of musicians (as I said; they will survive, just as they used to do), it's for their OWN survival they are fighting. There is no way in hell they are going to keep the giant profits that they have been gathering for the last decades.
But ultimately, they will have to do what P2P systems are already doing: adapt to the new circumstances (and forget about the former levels of profit), or whither and die.
WTO (