"Attempted" Copyright Infringement may be illegal soon.

Leo Mauler webgiant at yahoo.com
Sat Sep 1 15:39:48 CDT 2007


Proposed Crime of the Century: Attempted Copyright
Infringement
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/05/ippa07

Back in May 2007 Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
suggested a new bill that would make "attempted
copyright infringement" a crime, punishable by up to
life in prison.  He would need a sponsor in the House
or Senate to make Congress consider it, and I don't
know if anyone has agreed to sponsor it yet.  This is
a really scary law, considering how many currently
innocuous activities (such as having a spindle of
blank CDs next to your computer) could be made into
serious criminal offenses.  This is an excerpt from
the WIRED article:

> Essentially, the bill would turn copyright 
> law into something more akin to existing drug 
> laws: The government could seize personal 
> property, wiretaps would become legal for the 
> first time, violators could face life in 
> prison and, in an ambiguous and far-reaching 
> provision, the mere attempt to violate a 
> copyright would become a crime.
>
> The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 
> 2007, proposed by Gonzales on Monday, would 
> amend current U.S. copyright law to give the 
> government far more power to investigate and 
> prosecute cases, expand the scope of what 
> constitutes a criminal act, and would stiffen 
> penalties, including adding life terms for 
> those whose activities cause death.
>
> Among the proposed changes, the bill would 
> make it easier to charge someone as a repeat 
> offender and stiffen the penalty for 
> recidivism. It would expand forfeiture 
> provisions to allow the government to seize 
> any property used in the commission of a 
> crime -- a PC, a home, cash on hand.
> 
> Exporting pirated material would also become 
> a crime and the bill would grant the feds 
> wiretapping authority, which it currently 
> lacks. The "attempt" provision, stipulating 
> that mere intent constitutes a crime, means 
> that the law could conceivably be expanded 
> to interpret a computer full of music next 
> to a spindle of blank CDs as an act of 
> piracy.


       
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