« lies from the white house, and the fbi | Main | Constitution, what constitution »
March 29, 2004
doj civil prosecution of file sharing?
Koleman Strumpf, conservative Cato Institute affiliate just co authored a paper on file sharing. The upshot: "Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale...high selling albums actually benefit from file sharing."
Meanwhile congress moves to criminalize P2P. Wired story.
"...on Thursday, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) introduced a bill that would allow the Justice Department to pursue civil cases against file sharers, again making it easier for law enforcement to punish people trading copyright music over peer-to-peer networks. They dubbed the bill "Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation Act of 2004," or the Pirate Act."
Hatch's senate site, "Public health and safety are also directly threatened by business models that tempt children toward piracy and pornography and then use them as “human shields” against law enforcement. "
"As a result, our creative industries’ only remaining option to deter piracy is to bring enough civil enforcement actions against users of filesharing software. Tens of thousands of continuing civil enforcement actions might be needed to generate the necessary deterrence. I doubt that any nongovernmental organization has the resources or moral authority to pursue such a campaign."
Corante Hatch strange ally of pornographers, shows RIAA cost of lawsuits and negative feeling would be passed to the Feds.
"Titan Media, a producer of gay pornography, is well-known for its aggressive copyright infringement actions (Titan Media Pumped-Up over digital distribution). I'm sure that they would be more than happy to cooperate and coordinate with DOJ lawyers to stop piracy of their products. How proud Hatch will be when the first DOJ-acquired restitution checks are turned over to purveyors of smut."
Posted by parody at March 29, 2004 06:00 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ffej.org/cgi/mt/mt-tb.cgi/952
Comments
Finally, somone is talking about something new in the online piracy debate.
The issues heretofore so breathlessly reported as earth-shattering were in fact duds. Nothing new there -- just old law being applied to people who thought their ignorance of the law protected them. And, as opposed to, say, bugging their Congressdroids to change the bad laws, the defendants fulminated about the unfairness of the courts when they enforced laws routinely enforced in every other realm of daily life.
But this one is new. Hard to say if this legislation is for real, or just a ploy for campaign donations in an election year. But the notion of having DOJ commit its resources to civil suits for the benefit of a private industry is really new, and outrageous.
That's news. And that's worth griping about, big time.
Posted by: Great Satan at March 29, 2004 06:11 PM
what is a business model?
Posted by: Oakey at March 29, 2004 08:52 PM
in this case it's when i decide to make money off of advertising and you decide i'm using kids as human shields...
Posted by: ffej at March 29, 2004 08:57 PM