Copyright and Intellectual Property holders are all smiles today as the United States Government looks to further align its laws with the profit motives of the RIAA and MPAA
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including "attempts" to commit piracy.
The short version is that this proposed bill would....
Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright
Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software
Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations
Allow computers to be seized more readily
Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anticircumvention regulations.
Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes
Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America
The Story
I'm a knowledge worker type. I see the utility in Copyright law and IP law. These kind of laws which criminalize "Attempts" kinda give me cause for concern. In recent years the ubiquitousness of the internet and digital information at your fingertips have given rise to many situations and dilemmas which are murky. Digital Music and your rights and the copyholders rights are murky. Use of source information and the attribution thereof, such as quoting from the above article, are murky. A law such as this, which criminalizes any "Attempt" at copyright infringment, by it's nature discourages any future innovations that might in a court of law be found to be non-infringing use. Further, it seems to me that it stifles any current challenges to copyright law, because it deems such behavior as illegal, without any examination.
This proposed law is a giveaway to the Content Industries. This is special interest politics at it's worst, as far as I'm concerned. What do you guys(girls) think?