Posted on 05/09/2008 12:06:07 PM PDT by JerseyHighlander
the voting scorecard?
Right here.
Only 11 Noes, to include Ron Paul.
That's also the same point that a jury cannot help but understand when they turn a killer loose.
RIAA is really, really close to that point.
These guys weren't breast fed were they.
And it goes without saying, you will loose your Second Amendment right for life.
It's just another tax and bureaucracy. EU Copyright
The Berne Convention (which the US has signed) states that all something needs is constructive notice to be copyrighted... and lately not even that. It's enough to prove that you wrote something first.
But in the US, you cannot sue for damages or attorney's fees if you did not register your copyright with the US Copyright office for a fee of $45.00. Everywhere else in the world, this protection is free.
Imagine a blogger paying this $45.00 for every post to be protected?
So for all intents and purposes, US Copyright protection is effectively 3 months for most people. The rest of the world give authors copyright protection for about 50 years after their death.
This might be worth a Xer Ping?
I'll believe the U.S. Congress is serious about laws when they stop confiscating kids computers for downloading bad music and start confiscating the property of adults who damn well know better but break U.S. immigration and labor laws anyway.
It means they may take your home away if your KID is steeling music over the internet without even your knowledge.
Cause it happened on property you had direct control over though you are clueless.
let freedom ping!
I can’t believe any court would let this stand. On second thought, yes I can......
Will Bush sign it?
Absolutely. They do the same to property owners when drugs are involved.
Ron Paul voted against.
Posted by Leslie Poston on December 8th, 2007
There are a number of things the government has no business legislating. Some of these things are because government doesn't belong in a certain type of decision. Some of them, however, are because the government doesn't fully understand the issue. HR 4279 falls into the second category, along with the SAFE Act discussed here yesterday. The matching Senate bill, not yet voted upon, is S 522.
What is the purpose of HR 4279? Good question. Sponsored by Rep John Conyers Jr (D-MI), it is supposed to determine penalties for intellectual property law violations. The thought that punishment for unauthorized use of someone else's intellectual property should be clearly outlined is a good idea. It's a good way to eliminate the arbitrary RIAA fines that have been generated in recent years by the RIAA's thug tactics in going after everyone from grandmothers to children, whether they have computer access and use illegal file sharing or not.
What makes HR 4279 problematic is that it is a bill sponsored and passed before its time. You can't mete out punishment without first clearly defining the crime. It is also problematic in the amount they determined the fine for illegal files to be - a whopping $30,000 per track. That's right - per track. That works out to $360,000 for a 12 track CD!
Why is $30,000 per track so reprehensible? Because this law has been enacted before we have hashed out fair use definitions and determined what illegal tracks consist of. It is putting the cart before the horse. As it stands now, the RIAA and the legislators who support the RIAA want copies of music you already own to be considered illegal, among other unreasonable demands. That means that according to this law, if you rip a CD to your computer then lose or damage the CD, that ripped CD could be considered illegal, even though you paid for it.
Now tally that up at $30,000 per track multiplied by your entire CD collection. It's a huge number, isn't it? And all because we haven't finished redefining what is a legal or illegal file in this new day of digital information. The RIAA's argument that I can't back up my CD collection, or copy it to my iPod, has made me angry from the beginning because it makes no sense. HR 4279 seemingly reenforces this problematic notion that a consumer would have to buy the same song or album up to 7 times or more in various formats to satisfy the RIAA greed machine.
Of course, a key way this bill got passed at all was by using the preservation of the American economy as a talking point. It also has provisions for several new government jobs, like an intellectual property right enforcement division in the Department of Justice. Any time you invoke our economy or the children or new government jobs at high levels in congress you stand a good chance of getting even the least well thought out bill passed.
This bill increases the scope of government enforcement of poorly defined infringements past a normal scale and into the realm of violation of individual rights. Seizing expensive manufacturing equipment used for large-scale infringement from a commercial pirate may be appropriate, said Gigi Sohn, president and founder of Public Knowledge. Seizing a family's general-purpose computer in a download case, as this bill would allow, is not appropriate.
Other problematic possible repercussions include classifying family members as innocent infringers, or college students as felony infringers. How can you make that movie for film class if you can't use music that you own on CD to make a sound track? What good is an online photo album, shared, if you can't use your own photos because they grabbed a background image of something that may be copyrighted? What good is an iPod if putting your CDs, cassettes and albums on it could be construed as innocent infringement?
This bill also opens a door way for government to put a muzzle on IPs and network neutrality. This is something the behemoths of big business at the RIAA and the major TelCos have been panting for for years. Think of the possible impact this will have on companies that make much needed and often used multi purpose devices, or places that offer free WiFi (already hobbled by the SAFE Act earlier this week), or company files on remote IP networks. This bill is a huge, huge blow to the culture of online innovation if it passes in Senate.
Until or unless we define illegal use in such a way that takes into consideration fair use of copyrighted material you already own this is a bad law. We have to define illegal use and illegal files clearly, and we have not yet begun to do so. This law could create an avalanche of harm for the average person who is under the (in my opinion correct) assumption that they should be able to use the copyrighted material the bought with their own money however they see fit, not to mention its possible impact to the small business and individual online.
For further analysis of the issue, visit Public Knowledge, EFF, and PC Magazine.
To voice your opinion on Senate Bill 522 and prevent it from being passed, write your Senator here.
To voice your opinion on HR 4279 and get it repealed, write your Representative here.
I keep telling everyone.....They Are ALL Ba$tard$!
According to Grant Gross at PC World, the U.S. House of Representatives has just passed H.R. 4279, the so-called PRO-IP Act sponsored by John Conyers (D-MI) and funded by the copyright and telecommunications industries.
There are a number of big problems with H.R. 4279. Among other things, the bill mandates:
All of these provisions promise to be expensive, controversial, and intrusive for consumers and citizens.
As I have written earlier, the USHORs endorsement of this sort of pro-industry pap would appear to stem from campaign donations as opposed to sound legal reasoning and evidence-based policy-making
Another story on the bill includes the following quote:
We applaud the members of the House of Representatives for passing the PRO-IP Act, H.R. 4279, said Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, in response to its passage. It is a comprehensive, bipartisan measure that will strengthen our nations economy and generate more jobs for American workers by bolstering protections for intellectual property.
He added, Given the difficult economic times we face, the PRO-IP Act is welcome by both the business and labor communities because it can improve our nations economic outlook. I hope the Senate will move quickly to pass similar legislation.
Excuse me Dan, but please clarify for me exactly how the PRO-IP Act will translate into an improved American economy? If the so-called mortgage crisis has taught me something its that the US Govt should not be propping up flawed business models through lenient legislation and friendly enforcement practices - that way lies economic perdition.
Hopefully, the Senate will have the sense to busy themselves with more important matters.
----------------------
Representative John Conyers (D-MI) has put his reputation and committee authority behind H.R. 4279, the so-called PRO-IP Act (the acronym stands for: Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property).
The act was recently passed by Conyers judiciary committee and will now work its way onto the legislative schedule. It is backed by all the usual industry suspects (grouped together under the name of the Copyright Alliance) and is a potential disaster insofar as it threatens to impede fair use and balanced enforcement while increasing the criminalization of non-commercial infringement. H.R. 4279 would also create a new Copyright Czar within the federal government, a position that appears to be loosely modeled on the Drug Czar positions that have done so much to perpetuate the wasteful, expensive, and ineffective war on drugs.
While there is still the possibility that this bill could undergo substantive changes as it progresses through the house machinery, Internet users, civil rights activists, and technology consumers should be concerned about its current scope.
H.R. 4279 is bankrolled by multi-billion dollar corporate interests like Microsoft, News Corporation, and NBC, as well as industry lobby groups such as Business Software Alliance, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Recording Industry Association of America. These organizations have made every effort to encroach on the rights and liberties of consumers through their efforts to limit legal file sharing, police Internet traffic, and conduct illegal digital surveillance. They represent an extremely regressive vision of the Information Age and have no qualms about imposing that vision on their customers by any means necessary.
As this analysis of the bill by the non-profit org. Public Knowledge details, there are many aspects of H.R. 4279 worth saving. Nevertheless, it advances a regressive IP agenda on a number of fronts. According to the summary, the bill would do the following:
Amends the federal criminal code with respect to intellectual property to: (1) enhance criminal penalties for infringement of a copyright, for trafficking in counterfeit labels or packaging, and for causing serious bodily harm or death while trafficking in counterfeit goods or services; and (2) enhance civil and criminal forfeiture provisions for copyright infringement and provide for restitution to victims of such infringement.
Establishes within the Executive Office of the President the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative to formulate a Joint Strategic Plan for combating counterfeiting and piracy of intellectual property and for coordinating national and international enforcement efforts to protect intellectual property rights.
Directs the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to appoint 10 additional intellectual property attaches to work with foreign countries to combat counterfeiting and piracy of intellectual property.
The creation of these new positions and procedures are based on the warped world-view of the MPAA and the RIAA whereby copying=counterfeiting=crime. The networked digital environment is just not that simple and the law enforcement powers of the U.S. government should not be based on such a lopsided foundation. The Congress can do better.
More importantly, H.R. 4279 is not the kind of project a well-established, populist democrat like Conyers needs to get behind. And yet, his support reflects a troubling relationship with big-money telecommunications and culture-industry interests. Take a look at Conyers career campaign contributions on OpenSecrets.org. Thats right, AT&T, Time Warner, Sprint-Nextel, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, and the National Association of Broadcasters all appear in the top 20. OpenSecrets also reports that Comcast and Clear Channel Communications ranked high among Conyers donors during the 2006 election cycle. Dig a little deeper and we learn that (in addition to labor unions) big Telecom and Technology firms still represent the largest proportion of Conyers PAC donations during 2007-2008.
Whether or not a direct connection between these contributions and Conyers voting patterns exists remains to be proven. However, the point is that Conyers has made his career by standing up for transparency, civil rights and liberties against moneyed corporate interests (like Tobacco and Guns) and Republican cronyism.
Conyers was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, has been a strong voice against the Iraq war and a staunch critic of the Bush administration. As a result, he enjoys a reputation as a progressive bulwark. All the more reason he does not need to put his hands in the pockets of big telecom and tech corporations.
Instead of unconditionally supporting HR 4279 - a bill that threatens the freedom of the Internet and curtails innovation in the name of Big Business - Conyers should use his authority to re-shape the bill. He has a responsibility to his constituents and to other members of the Democratic Party whose interests do not lie with the Telecommunications and Software Industry giants. As a result, Conyers should not favor tougher enforcement of restrictive copyright laws. Unless it is radically transformed, HR 4279 will not support the citizens, consumers, or small-businesses who really need to benefit from the potential of digital technologies. John Conyers is exactly the sort of principled elected official who could change that.
Is a list available of RIAA political contributions?
bump
Our socialist government hates private property. This is just the latest excuse to steal it.
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