The president's votes on FISA, his support of the Patriot Act, the expansion of TSA unreasonable search and seizures, and now the war on medical marijuana, demonstrates his commitment to freedom right here at home. It's not enough to go after you as a sick pot smoker, though, now he's going to send the department of Justice after you for downloading. Behold, in all it's glory, The Administration's White Paper on Intellectual Property Enforcement Legislative Recommendations.
Copyright is one of those things that Americans just don't think about that much, if they did then all that music sharing would have never happened. They would have said to themselves, "wait a minute now ! that's copyrighted".
Those olde dudes, Jefferson and Madison, exchanged a series of letters in which they discussed the idea of copyright. Neither was particularly enamored with granting a monopoly on works. They eventually agreed that a monopoly for a LIMITED time might not be a completely awful thing. Madison also had this to say, relative to the idea that "Monopolies are sacrifices of the many to the few." :
Is there not also infinitely less danger of this abuse in our governments than in most others?
Madison - grave - rolling. Again, they almost decided to dispense with the granting of monopolies altogether, but thought that a limited monopoly would encourage works.
There's that word LIMITED again. And it's damn well supposed to mean what you think it means. Congress disagreed even though the word limited made it directly into the constitution. Since the 4th amendment is now optional, some ill defined restriction on the powers of congress is hardly going to get any attention from the millionaires' club.
Congress duly passed the infamous Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act. This has effectively made copyright infinite because as soon as anything an immortal coporation cares about goes out of copyright they'll simply pay congress to extend it again. Amazingly this law was retroactive and has the ridiculous feature of protecting works even though nobody owns them. You can't copy something even when there isn't anybody who is legally entitled to object !
Our corporate supreme court, realizing the horror of releasing Mickey Mouse into the wild, where evil basement dwellers could make pornographic cartoons with his likeness, decided to sanctify congress' end run around the constitution. Their lame-brained argument went something like this: "hey, it's up to congress to decide what limited time is, who are we to decide ?". Here's the factoid that sets the level of idiocy involved in this ruling - Justice Scalia thought it was a terrible decision and wrote a rather scathing dissension, if only he would use his powers for good. The decision is not that long and I encourage you to read it. It demonstrates just how human the justices are, and that they're not quite as smart as you probably thought they were.
Well not to worry, the law and order president, worried about the grave economic harm which will come from America when you download an episode of Battlestar Galactica, is coming to the rescue :
Clarify that, in appropriate circumstances, infringement by streaming, or by means of other similar new technology, is a felony
"appropriate circumstances". Now that sounds kind of weaselly (sorry weasels), doesn't it ? Well you'll never guess, but the Whitepaper leaves it exactly that vague. So basically Congress is going to do exactly that, establish those appropriate circumstances, and it's not going to be pretty. You can also expect Democrats to wholeheartedly embrace throwing the book at you, considering that they have, in fact, earned their place as Hollywood's favorite party when it comes to monetary contributions. Always remember, just because Democrats are better than Republicans doesn't mean they're on you side.
Biden, in fact, thinks that you are stealing when you copy something. You see, it's exactly the same as smash and grab, except for the part that, you know, what you're "taking" is STILL THERE.
You may also remember the little tidbit of news about our financial savior, Senator Dodd, going off to head up the MPAA's lobbying. So I'm sure he'll be busy rounding up the votes and distributing checks to make sure that things are set-up exactly the way the MAFIAA wants them.
And DHS is going to ask corporations what's legal:
Give DHS Authority to Share Information with Rightholders Pre-Seizure to Help Determine Whether Products Are Infringing or Devices Are Circumvention Devices
Are you f*cking kidding me ? Law enforcement is going to go to the entertainment industry and ask whether something is a circumvention device ?
Well guess what ? Every PC on the planet with a DVD player and a copy of DeCSS is an infringement device. I could make a device that IS NOT PRIMARILY FOR INFRINGEMENT but capable of it, you know like a VCR, and law enforcement "asks" rightholders if it's such a device and they say yes, I'm now a felon. The government is going to ask industry how the law should be made, on the fly. To find out how this is not just an academic exercise there's a little law called the DMCA which is essentially empowering corporations to be an arm of the justice dept. Modifying hardware that you bought and paid for can now get you arrested. Imagine if working on your car put you in violation of the DMCA. It's not that far-fetched. Lexmark tried to do it for printers.
And no, we're not done, because the world is not safe until every last copyright infringer is in a federal prison. So to help put you there, they want to be able to wiretap:
Recommendation: The Administration recommends that Congress amend 18 U.S.C. § 2516 to give law enforcement authority to seek a wiretap for criminal copyright and trademark offenses.
The goal of this act is to criminalize copyright infringement in a major way, putting it on par, with say financial fraud (yeah - that might be snark). NO WHERE IS FAIR USE MENTIONED. No where is there some sort of discussion undertaken as to how these laws will be used to target individuals, as they most surely will be. No where is the monopoly position the creators enjoy discussed, or the responsibility that comes with a government backed monopoly. The entertainment mafiaa has been filing frivolous suits against people purely as an intimidation tactic, because they're not happy that you're not happy paying their high prices. Not too mention all of the ridiculous region coding, and screwy availability of content depending on where you are in the world.
There's a whole lot more in there, prison sentences are going to be increased drastically, more "sharing" of information between agencies. Theoretically this would not be quite so bad if it was limited to going after large scale criminal organizations, but really, does someone who cranks out copies of a DVD need to go to a federal prison for 20 years ? I question the allocation of resources needed for this enforcement.
So when are we going to see a whitepaper on financial fraud enforcement legislation, cuz last I checked, the fraudsters were still walking around free, so clearly we must not have the legislative tools to go after them. The justice department has shown a dedication to going after the little fish while letting the Vampire Squid's of the world walk away. It's getting on my nerves.
The guise of this whitepaper is to go after large scale infringement by criminal organizations, but make no mistake about it, the movie producers and music distributors are waging a war on their customers, and they want these harsh laws to intimidate people.
Make no mistake, reasonable copyright is important. The GNU public license requires a copyright framework. Copyright was not ever intended to let your grandkids make a living doing nothing, and nor should it. And it was most certainly never supposed to aid in maintaining the powers of the already too powerful corporations.
Expect the most egregious legislative support for these positions to be confirmed on a Friday with very little discussion.