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Anti-piracy PRO-IP bill passed
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 15th October 2008
The MPAA and RIAA will soon have their very own hotline to Congress thanks to an 'IP czar' created through the PRO-IP Act.
The bill – which was also backed by the US Chamber of Commerce – will toughen existing criminal laws against piracy and counterfeiting in the US in addition to the creation of an intellectual property czar whose responsibility it is to advise the presidency on how to defend copyrights both within the US and internationally, according to Reuters. The costs that can be sought from a pirate have also been dramatically increased under the Act.
The CEO of the Chamber of Commerce Tom Donohue claims that the PRO-IP Act “sends the message to IP criminals everywhere that the US will go the extra mile to protect American innovation,” and hopes that the new law will help to curb the estimated $250 billion losses incurred due to intellectual property infringement. How much of this money will be ploughed back in to the fight thanks to increased bureaucracy via the office of the IP czar – something the EFF is concerned about – remains to be seen.
Although the law gives intellectual property owners – read the music and movie cartels – new legal recourse for chasing and punishing pirates, one particularly troublesome aspect of the Act has been removed: a measure which would have allowed intellectual property holders to request that the Justice Department file civil lawsuits against suspected pirates, something which the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Richard Esguerra feared would turn the organisation into little more than “pro bono personal lawyers for the content industry.”
Even with the civil suit angle removed many are still unhappy with aspects of the case, with advocacy group Public Knowledge highlighting the fact that the law allows for the seizure of equipment used in a suspected piracy case. Spokesman Art Brodsky explains that in a house with a single computer “[where] one person uses it for [illegal] downloads and one for homework[, ] the whole computer goes.”
Do you believe that tougher laws – and an IP czar – are what's needed to curb the current high levels of piracy, or are lobbyists exaggerating the scale of the problem for their own ends? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (13)Stats: 0.052 seconds
This move just proves how archaic the entire system is - They're not going to stop Pirates with a few laws. Unless the laws involve cutting hands off when people steal.
The industry needs to move forwards, or artists need to publish on their own backs, it's not hard to put a set of mp3's (without DRM) on a site with a checkout system, is it?
Apes & Androids managed it just fine, and they're not exactly well know like say, Nine Inch Nails (Not a fan, but they're pretty well known, yes?) and they managed it with 'Ghosts' too.
Your no longer free.
More like "land of the free music and movies" and this won't change it IMO...
Freedom and free will costs a few million dollars these days. Otherwise it's illegal.
You can sue a foreign entity in America for civil violations according to American law if they hold any assets here.
Also, it would be "you're not free," not "your not free," and your statement is ludicrous to boot. There is not a single Constitutional or legal right this bill contradicts. The real problem with it is that it is a waste of DOJ's resources. They've got real criminals to go after (and drug rings to bust so the price goes up and the remaining producers get even richer), there's no reason for them to be wasting time on civil matters.
Wish I was
This won't affect consumer lever piracy (P2P, torrents, etc) much, but it might (probably not) put a dent in the guys selling cracked copies of software on the street corner in Shanghai, which most of us agree is a good thing.
Fundamentally, taking on piracy is a fools errand as it can never be stopped, or even suppressed for more than a short period of time. It does bother me a little that of all the things the government should be doing, they're wasting their time on this, but oh well.
And finally...
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/steal_this_comic.png
There will always be an underground on the internet for those who wish to distribute files and trying to police the internet will work just as well as my countries attempts to police the world.
I really believe that none of these advocates groups and organizations like the RIAA and MPAA will be happy until they have the right to filter every single bit of data being sent anywhere to anyone on the internet. And now they basically have federal backing.
>:(
If piracy was genuinely hurting artists, we'd be hearing way more about it. Like along the lines of nothing coming close to breaking even anymore. They're just worried about their profit margins shrinking a few points, which should hopefully make them think twice before greenlighting another "_____ Movie" joke of a comedy flick.