U.S. senators have floated a bill boosting copyright and trademark protection, legislation that would allow the attorney general to prosecute civil cases of infringement and one that allows for the forfeiture of hardware used to infringe.
OK. That’s the jive newspaper description of crap legislation.
Most important, the measure, like the House version, creates an executive-level Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, which would require Senate confirmation. The executive and its office would be charged with creating a nationwide plan to combat piracy and “report directly to the president and Congress regarding domestic international intellectual property enforcement programs.”
The bill encourages federal-state anti-piracy task forces, the training of other countries about IP enforcement and, among other things, institutes an FBI piracy unit…
Someone send me a penny postcard when our elected hacks begin to care as much for individual rights, Fair Use, the opportunity for ordinary folks to use recorded material they bought – as they do for corporate commercial barons.
#31–frag==good point.
Also interesting is this quick read about piracy of IP–guy counterfeited software and sold it on Ebay.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/07/hacker-counterf.html
The proposed bill is at:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/IP2008Law.pdf
Any surprise who the (liberal loose cannon)authors are?
“Mr. LEAHY (for himself, Mr. SPECTER, Mr. BAYH, Mr. VOINOVICH, Mrs.
FEINSTEIN, and Mr. CORNYN)
Meanwhile, we have $4/gal gas, illegal immigration that exceeds the birth rate, inflation at a record rate, and millions are about to lose their homes.
I never realized DVDs were SO important, as to come before these other issues.
WOW actually I’m surprised Feinstein is involved. I always considered her one of the few intelligent people in government. I guess I was wrong.
It is when the MPAA and RIAA are funneling thousands of dollars into your pocket.
#34 – She used to be respected. I think she has just been in D.C. too long. Needs to be replaced.
I’m email Feinstein on this if anyone else wants to here’s the link.
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe
“Someone send me a penny postcard when our elected hacks begin to care as much for individual rights, Fair Use, the opportunity for ordinary folks to use recorded material they bought – as they do for corporate commercial barons.”
Fat chance, lets compare this pro corporate anti-internet bill, with another anti-internet bill (HR5889) that could cost many internet artists to lose copyright of stuff they have on the web.
More Info on HR 5889
CALLING ALL GEEKS! This is your time to save the day!
We need you to design encryption and proxies in all our tools so that the government, (ours, China, the Arab countries, etc) have no possible way of knowing who is doing what or where.
The window for innovation is open but it’s going to close fast and probably soon. It might already be too late for China.
C’MON GEEKS! Step up. Only you can do it. This is your time.
Someone send me a penny postcard when our elected hacks begin to care as much for individual rights, as they do for corporate commercial barons.
What can I say? Graft speaks. Based on actions past I’d say most of Congress and the white house would vote for selling kids in the street as long as they got paid off.
Do I respect our elected public officals in Washington D.C.? Of course. It takes somebody special to as crooked, greedy, and down right vial as they are.
Interesting tidbit I discovered the other day…
Bush has one of the lowest approval ratings of any president ever, at just under 30%. However, that looks fairly outstanding compared to the current congress’ approval rating of 14%.
Not a particularly positive time for American politics I think.
There is a simple solution. Change the law such that IP is treated exactly like a patent and change the copyright length back to 10 ten years. If they did that, the incentive for all of these “enforcement” agencies would go away.
#34
AHAHAHHAHAHAHAH
Clearly you are not from CA. Most of us from CA (but not from Frisco) consider her and her miniature version Boxer, to be complete idiots. Both are Hollywood’s bitches.
#41 “However, that looks fairly outstanding compared to the current congress’ approval rating of 14%.”
Well, makes sense. The minions of the evil tyrant
are usually hated as much or more than the tyrant.
So how does this law affect someone who does not copy copyrighted material? What are the consequences for the honest guy?
#7 for the win
> “What are the consequences for the honest guy?”
Someone tries to sell a judge on something stupid being considered “piracy” or something reasonable being considered “copyright infringement” or something technical being “ip violation” and the dumb judge agrees.
In the 1980s, it was considered a right to backup your stuff or use it how you saw fit personally.
Today, copying a DVD onto a home LAN for private viewing would probably be viewed as illegal … as a simple example.
Judges suck when making decisions regarding the internet and computers in general because usually they have no clue what is being discussed.
I am still waiting for a clear ruling on fair use for people who PAY for stuff. As I read the currant rules I am not evan sure watching movies is legal on my computer. I know content creaters would not like me to be able to if they had their way. I have PAID for thousands of dollers of content and I feel in my own home/car I should be able to do with it as I please.
I would be nice if they cared this much about our jobs and the illegal immigration problems. Illegals suck much much more money out of this country than any ammount of priacy. But then illegal aliens are a form of corprate welfare, which is why the democrats are for it as well as free-rapethenation-trade. All this so the elite and rich and get more money.
It’s interesting that the Demoncrats elites that purport to fight for the common masses are more inline with Republicans ( who are for big-business?) on most laws.
It’s time for nationlist party, someone that will fight against the Globalist agenda and for this nation and it’s people.
The political debate isn’t Demoncrat vs Repulicrat, it’s Globalist versus Nationalist. UN versus the USA and whose interest will you be for, because you can’t have it both ways no more than the States are really independent of the federal govenment in the US.