Why should the government be responsible for the Music and Movie industry's failure to adequately protect their assests?

Mark of the Beast, coming your way.

These people will stop at nothing until the copyright is as expansive as can possibly be imagined and is perpetual as well. They'll most likely get it too. Sure some of the worst parts of this legislation may be dropped, but I'd be willing to put money on them getting 90% of what they want.

Intellectual property seems like a fair idea, until you realize how much freedom has to be sacrificed to enforce it. Individual liberty is going to continue to be at risk until the government holds individual rights over commercial rights.

fixed?

Regarding Disney: I'm sorry, I didn't know they were going broke from inadequate copyright protection.

Just how many billions of dollars should a cartoonist be worth -- especially when the cartoonist has been dead for thirty-five years? And do we really need the FBI and a prison gulag system to protect the intellectual property of cartoonists?

Come the Revolution of 2015, all patents and copyrights revert to null. It's just gone too far.

Intellectual property seems like a fair idea, until you realize how much freedom has to be sacrificed to enforce it. Individual liberty is going to continue to be at risk until the government holds individual rights over commercial rights.

Most intellectual property only places limits on those who seek to use the protected technology. This seeks to place limits on people who will never copy a video. It’s a whole new type of beast.

patent

Come the Revolution of 2015, all patents and copyrights revert to null.

Hey, what did I do? I mean, I understand that copyright guy and all, but I'm not so bad!

patent  +AMDG

It would be a civil offense to create or sell any kind of computer equipment that "does not include and utilize certified security technologies" approved by the federal government.

First it was: Is your church BATF approved, now one will have to have their PC gubment approved.

It should be up to the companies that distribute their copyrighted material to protect it. Not third parties by force of law.

This is VERY bad. Screw these people.

I agree that our goverment should be going after organised crime groups that setup huge warehouses that make hundreds if not thousands of copies per hour but they are not going after people like that they are going after joe user that makes a copy of his cd.

Individual rights to make something then sell it is the exact samething as commieral rights. The difference is these companies should be making their own standard and enforceing it with new updates and security not useing our goverment and tax dollars to protect their product.

Agreed.

Hey, what did I do? I mean, I understand that copyright guy and all, but I'm not so bad!

It's true, patents haven't been as abusive as copyrights, but given the rate of technological progress, it seems kind of foolish to have a seventeen year patent on microprocessors. Given Moore's Law, that means that by the time a patent has expired, the latest generation of microprocessors should be a thousand times more powerful. I realize that patents create an incentive for research and development, but they also create a disincentive, in that if you end up in second place by ten minutes, all your R&D costs -- which may have totalled billions -- are now worthless. And thereupon the economy is denied seventeen years of competition.

Something doesn't seem right here. Seventeen years might be okay for a horse-and-buggy era, but in the age of computers, a nanosecond is a long time. I'm not suggesting that we reduce patents to seventeen nanoseconds, but seventeen months ought to be worth consideration.

I agree that our goverment should be going after organised crime groups that setup huge warehouses that make hundreds if not thousands of copies per hour, but they are not going after people like that, they are going after joe user that makes a copy of his cd.

I can see it now. Get stopped by a cop, be fined $10,000 and jailed because, in an attempt to keep from getting your property stolen, you copied the precious, expensive music CDs which you legally bought onto throwaway CDs to play in your car for your own personal enjoyment.

Why is it government passes laws to make criminals out of innocent, harmless people while the really evil (politicians, murderers, Jesse Jackson, etc.) get off scot-free?

This is harassment.

What they are attempting to do, and so far, sucessfully, is to use technological roadblocks to do away with fair use.

Courts have ruled that people have certain rights, with regard to copyrighted material. They may make copies of something for personal use; they may use excerpts of a protected work for a school project; they may 'time-shift' programs.

Hollywood doesn't like this; they wish to impose a pay-per-view regime on all entertainment. They can't force the courts to change their view, so they are using technology and legislation to make fair use impossible.

Republicans should oppose this; the Hollywood left is their enemy.

Check this out!

tech_index ping

This should be an opportunity to revisit and repeal the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. While they are trying to extend it, advocates of freedom should be pushing back to repeal it.

This is ridiculous. Good bye PIC chip, and any elctronics device under $50. Would PLA's and other such non-central-processor ensembles of programmable logic be covered?

But for that reason it will not pass, G-d help us, for it is the petard of hubris the copycrats are foisting themselves on.