http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080911-committee-amends-approves-enormous-gift-to-big-content.html

Quote :

"The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008, which was blasted by consumer groups and library associations this week as an "enormous gift" to the content industry, won the approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee this afternoon by a 14-4 vote. As first reported by Ars this morning, a series of amendments were added during committee mark-up, providing privacy safeguards for records seized under the law and stripping away several controversial provisions—though not the hotly contested section empowering the Justice Department to litigate civil infringement suits on behalf of IP owners. One significant change to the proposed legislation addressed, at least in some small measure, a concern broached by Public Knowledge and other consumer groups in a letter to the Judiciary Committee yesterday. Though the amended bill still creates expanded provisions for civil forfeiture of property implicated in an IP infringement case—potentially including servers or storage devices containing the personal data of large numbers of innocent persons—lawmakers altered the bill's language to affirmatively require a court to issue a protective order "with respect to discovery and use of any records or information that has been impounded," establishing "procedures to ensure that confidential, private, proprietary, or privileged information contained in such records is not improperly disclosed or used." They did not, however, go so far as to immunize the data of "virtual bystanders" from seizure, as the letter had requested. The forfeiture section was also modified to exclude, as grounds for seizure, the violation of the "anticircumvention" provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The old language would have allowed for forfeiture of tools that could be used to circumvent digital rights management software. Excised, as well, was language that would have barred the "transshipment" through the United States of IP infringing goods. Since different countries have different IP rules, this language would potentially have defined goods that were legal in both their country of origin and their final destination—because, for instance, differences in copyright terms allowed works to fall into the public domain overseas while still under copyright in the US—as contraband. The amendments also added a seat for a representative of the Food and Drug Administration, as well as any "such other agencies as the President determines to be substantially involved in the efforts of the Federal Government to combat counterfeiting and piracy" on the "interagency intellectual property enforcement advisory committee" that the bill would create. Two new provisions were tacked on to the end of the law. The first directs the Comptroller General to conduct a study of the impact of piracy on domestic manufacturers and develop recommendations for improving the protection of IP in manufactured goods. (Wouldn't it be better to do this sort of thing before enacting enforcement legislation?) The second is a nonbinding "sense of congress" resolution stipulating that, while "effective criminal enforcement of the intellectual property laws against such violations in all categories of works should be among the highest priorities of the Attorney General," the AG should give priority, in cases of software piracy, to cases of "willful theft of intellectual property for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain," especially those "where the enterprise involved in the theft of intellectual property is owned or controlled by a foreign enterprise or other foreign entity." Which is to say, that copy of Photoshop you pulled off BitTorrent last week isn't on the top of the Justice Department's docket... yet. Remaining intact was language that would give the Justice Department authority to pursue civil suits against IP infringers, awarding any damages won to the patent, copyright, or trademark holders. Critics have blasted this provision as a gift of free, taxpayer-funded legal services to content owners. The bill now goes to the full Senate, and must still be recognized with its counterpart legislation in the House, which lacks the language deputizing the DoJ to bring suit on behalf of IP owners."

9/15/2008 1:30:10 PM

moved to tech talk

9/15/2008 1:34:29 PM

I'm certain that this will boost CD sales.

9/15/2008 2:17:32 PM

Terrible news.

9/15/2008 2:39:23 PM

Guess who's cheering this on the most in the Senate?

...oh. Joe Biden. Whoops.

9/15/2008 2:41:59 PM

^ Indeed. Biden scares me. I'm glad you brought that to my attention in an earlier thread.

9/15/2008 3:55:40 PM

I wonder if this will actually make it through Congress by the end of their term? Given the less than cordial, election season frenzy on the Hill, very little is probably going to get passed at this point.

9/15/2008 4:04:28 PM

^^^ Bad, but not as bad as what the GOP put through Congress.

9/15/2008 5:33:59 PM

What exactly do you mean, "What the GOP put through Congress?" Have you even bothered to research this guy's record?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html

Someone else has done your research for you, even.

9/15/2008 6:28:46 PM

^^ I'd be more concerned about individuals than party lines. If McCain or Palin voted for some ridiculous shit like this in recent memory I'd be voting for a Ham Sandwich in 2008.

[Edited on September 15, 2008 at 6:30 PM. Reason : ^]

9/15/2008 6:30:01 PM

Surprise Surpricse the GOV't (both dems and repubs) care more about their rich corporate buddies and lobbyists more than its people. I find a gov't that merely masks and bends to the will of rich corporate plutocrats deplorable; well maybe its better they a klyptocracy or communist.

9/15/2008 6:36:12 PM

Your spent dollars just this month will count more than your vote in the election. When are we gonna realize this...

9/15/2008 6:37:05 PM

Quote :

"Your spent dollars just this month will count more than your vote in the election. When are we gonna realize this... "

9/15/2008 8:50:27 PM

hey, if you aren't doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about.

9/15/2008 10:03:29 PM

Copying files isn't wrong. At physical property has some justification. If I take your bike, you can't ride it. On the other hand, if I copy your song, you can still listen to it. The government shouldn't intervene to manufacture scarcity. If something can be distributed at negligible cost, that should be encouraged, not punished.

9/15/2008 10:24:48 PM

Does the Gov't know you copied that article? You may want to destroy your hard-drive- just to be safe.

9/15/2008 10:31:32 PM

Think about this way: If you discovered a technique for copying food as easily as files, what would be the correct response?

9/15/2008 10:39:14 PM

Quote :

"hey, if you aren't doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about."

Jesus christ, why don't you suck some more Big Corporate Dick.

If the RIAA sends me a letter I will put $12 in an envelope and mail it to Pearl Jam for their "loss" for the potential sales they lost for me "pirating" their song.

9/15/2008 10:48:05 PM

^ i believe that would be the proper reponse, yes.

btw, sorry that you didn't detect my sarcasm.

9/15/2008 11:18:20 PM

sarcasm + internet = fail

as often as not

be careful, folks

9/15/2008 11:23:10 PM

gonna put this here too

http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/09/federal-domain-seizure-raises-new-concerns-over-online-censorshi/

Quote :

"It's been a little more than a year since the US government began seizing domains of music blogs, torrent meta-trackers and sports streaming sites. The copyright infringement investigation, led by US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities, quickly raised eyebrows among many free speech and civil rights advocates, fueling a handful of legal challenges. Few are more compelling, or frightening than a case involving Dajaz1.com. As TechDirt reports, the popular hip-hop blog has been at the epicenter of a sinuous and seemingly dystopian dispute with the feds -- one that underscores the heightening controversy surrounding federal web regulation, and blurs the constitutional divide between free speech and intellectual property protection. Dajaz1 was initially seized under the 2008 Pro IP Act, on the strength of an affidavit that cited several published songs as evidence of copyright infringement. As it turns out, ,any of these songs were actually provided by their copyright holders themselves, but that didn't stop the government from seizing the URL anyway, and plastering a warning all over its homepage. Typically, this kind of action would be the first phase of a two-step process. Once a property is seized, US law dictates that the government has 60 days to notify its owner, who can then choose to file a request for its return. If the suspect chooses to file this request within a 35-day window, the feds must then undertake a so-called forfeiture process within 90 days. Failure to do so would require the government to return the property to its rightful owner. But that's not exactly how things played out in the case of Dajaz1. For more details on the saga, head past the break. Acting within their rights, Dajaz1's owners filed a request for return, and were reportedly told that the forfeiture process would soon get underway. When the 90-day deadline came and went without any movement, the site's lawyer, Andrew B. Bridges, reached out to the government for explanation. In response, the feds said they had received an extension from the court, but refused to provide evidence of this extension, claiming that the court order and motion papers were filed under seal. The documents, they replied, could not be disclosed, even in redacted form. This came as news to Bridges, who claims to have never been informed of the extension. According to the lawyer, authorities told him he wouldn't be notified of future extensions, either, and wouldn't even have the chance to file counterarguments during an adversarial hearing. This stalemate dragged on for months, thanks to a series of mysterious extensions. These extensions, moreover, were not even accessible through a Los Angeles court docket. When Bridges asked the US attorney for proof of the extensions, he was told that he'd simply have to "trust" that they were obtained. After letting the last extension expire, the government ultimately informed Bridges that the domain would be returned to its owners. That happened on Thursday. ICE has yet to offer a thorough explanation for the change of heart, with spokesman Ross Feinstein curtly telling Ars Technica that "the government concluded that the appropriate and just result was to decline to pursue judicial forfeiture." RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth, meanwhile, continues to defend the initial seizure, telling Ars that "Dajaz1 profited from its reputation for providing links to pre-release copies, and during that time nearly 2,300 recordings linked to the site were removed from various file-sharing services." Looking back on the case, one can't help but wonder whether the rule of law may have been gravely compromised. First, the government hoovered up a buffet of domain names with an urgency that seemed to imply imminent danger. Then, instead of proceeding to the next step, prosecutors simply let the case marinate in an ironclad pot of secrecy, without so much as entertaining a request for adversarial hearings. After apparently realizing it had no evidence to stand upon, ICE finally let it drop -- but not without branding Dajaz1 as a bastion of copyright criminality, and shutting it down for more than a year. If Bridges' account is indeed accurate, this would effectively amount to what TechDirt describes as "lawless, unconstitutional, cowboy censorship" -- a distinctly Kafkaesque brand of criminal prosecution executed under the guise of jurisprudence. We sincerely hope, of course, that this isn't the end of the story. At a time when concerns over federal censorship is reaching a fever pitch, you'd think the government would take every precaution to reassure consumers of its commitment to due process, and of the prosecutorial restraint that the Constitution mandates. But unless someone steps in to clear away the clouds of suspicion blanketing Dajaz1, it's hard to envision these concerns fading away anytime soon."

1/18/2012 10:24:38 AM

The shutdown of wikipedia today has amounted to a DOS attack on most government webpages pertaining to SOPA, any of the links on the major websites will not load right now.

1/18/2012 11:33:59 AM

^ *megaupload

1/19/2012 8:33:09 PM

Most government webpages don't link to MegaUpload, but they do love them some Wikipedia.

1/19/2012 9:11:24 PM