Obama Administration Announces Massive Piracy Crackdown

[Hobgoblinpie]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=18815

 

A lot of the article, to me, is inane stuff we have all heard before. The one thing that caught my eye was this paragraph:

 

The White House's vision is perhaps a prelude to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which will go before Congress later this year. The bill would make P2P or BitTorrent client development a criminal offense if the distributed software was used for infringement. It also implements an interesting provision called "imminent infringement", which allows the government to charge people who they think might be about to infringe with a civil offense (for example if you searched "torrent daft punk"). This is among the first official "thought crime" provisions to be proposed by the U.S. government. The bill also makes it a criminal offense to bypass DRM.

 

I've bolded the parts I find important.

 

All BitTorrent clients are used for illegal purposes. Originally BitTorrent was created to legally share files, and expanded rapidly to be used for what it is primarily used for now. In this case, they are basically saying that developing applications that transfers files over P2P networks is illegal.

 

When I read the 'Imminent Infringement' part, I instantly thought of Minority Report.If you're searching (as they gave an example of) 'Torrent Daft Punk' then you are going to want to download it. But what if you search 'Daft Punk' and click on a torrent site not knowing what it is? That could be a potential 'Imminent Infringement'. I do not agree with this part at all, it is stupid and unnecessary. Aside from how they actually intend to enforce this, my view is that you can't be arrested for something you haven't done (at least not something like this. In the case of planned murder, terrorism, arson etc I would agree that the persons planning should be arrested). I do think that piracy needs to be reduced, but this way of going about it is incredibly stupid. It seems as if the USA wants to become China, with its tight control over the internet.

[Slayer_Jesse]

two words: Oh and [cabbage].

[helpmeownlife]

Bypassing DRM? Are you [bleep]ing kidding me, Obama? "Hmm well I just purchased a new PC as mine got outdated in the last year...I suppose I'll transfer my $3,000 worth of legally purchased music to my new PC so I can actually use it!" "Wait, I'm going to be arrested and treated the same as if I stole the music in the first place? [cabbage].".

 

[bleep]ing ridiculous.

[Maxingmck]

Save the police's work you idiot, and save court for real criminals

 

Who cares the singers/actors are already rolling in the dough..

[champion]

two words: Oh and [cabbage].

Why are you afraid? Huh? You one of those illegal downloaders perhaps? You'll be contacted shortly.

[OldJoe]

Yay, more fascism.

 

But how are they going to prosecute a programmer of uTorrent for example? There are loads of distributed softwares which helps people get a hold of copyrighted material, are they gonna go after Bill Gates just because he used to throw the dice at Microsoft?

Torrent programs are great, they are extremely cost effective. Any smart IT company which distributes software should use it, since they'll save loads on server costs.

 

I like how the US governemnt, as well as mine, concentrate more on catching economic criminals rather than rapists and other physical harming people.

For example, many of you know that the guys behind Piratebay were thrown into jail for 1 year and to pay 3m (roughly) in settlements, whilst my country lead the number of rapes per capita in Europe. Love it.

[Racheya]

For now, all I have to say is [bleep] This [cabbage]. I thought the Digital Economy Bill here in the UK was bad enough.... :unsure: I'll probably make more of a post later, sufficed to say that I think this is utterly ridiculous and a disgusting idea.

[fakeitormakeit2]

Ah yes, so Obama wishes to pass more restrictions in mediums of information? The imminent infringement thought crime? What is next, cameras in the TV, implementing of newspeak and the banning of oldspeak?

[helpmeownlife]

two words: Oh and [cabbage].

Why are you afraid? Huh? You one of those illegal downloaders perhaps? You'll be contacted shortly.

 

Did you even read the post? Even if you legally purchase every single song you ever wish to own, once you get a new PC (which will inevitablly need to happen), if you bypass DRM (ex. each song you buy on iTunes can only play on a certain amount of devices, legally), you will be charged just the same.

[K4ylan]

*deletes computer*

 

"What illegal movies? I haven't the faintest idea what you're going on about...."

[champion]

two words: Oh and [cabbage].

Why are you afraid? Huh? You one of those illegal downloaders perhaps? You'll be contacted shortly.

 

Did you even read the post? Even if you legally purchase every single song you ever wish to own, once you get a new PC (which will inevitablly need to happen), if you bypass DRM (ex. each song you buy on iTunes can only play on a certain amount of devices, legally), you will be charged just the same.

...okay. :|

[Skull]

It won't be passed, it's no big deal. There's absolutely no way to enforce a law like this even if it did.

[Giordano]

OKay, but how the hell do they know who uses illegal downloading?

[Faux]

just when i thought canada was gonna be on par with US with piracy laws, the US goes ahead and outdo our govt

[Racheya]

It won't be passed, it's no big deal. There's absolutely no way to enforce a law like this even if it did.

True. If anything it's more an attempt at fear mongering: FILE SHARE AND WE'LL COME AND ARREST YOU AND KILL YOUR PUPPIES BECAUSE THAT'S HOW BAD FILE SHARING IS!!

 

There's relatively few ways to stop file sharing over P2P networks and no matter how much they'll try to come up with a solution the pirates will be two steps ahead of them. Maybe one day the industry will realise that if they want to reduce piracy they need to embrace the internet, not try to control it, to remove DRM and to reduce prices to levels people can actually afford.

[pkinyou]

Things like this scare me, I mean ust look at the whole Hurt Locker controversy. The majoity of the downloaders are college students, if they couldnt pay for the movie in the first place what makes you think they should have to pay hundreds or thousands... I know a girl wo was in this sorority at my college and she got caught downloading music illegally- she was forced to pay 8,000$, i think it was like 2 dollars for every song she illegally downloaded.

 

I purchase the majority of my music legally, but having serious penalties towards those that cant afford it is ridiculous, I know people are going to be like "Stealing is still stealing" but the people prosecuting those downloaders should work more towards getting the sites that provide the downloads taken down! In my mind its like taking down the drug dealer not the junky.

[Omar]

Did you even read the post? Even if you legally purchase every single song you ever wish to own, once you get a new PC (which will inevitablly need to happen), if you bypass DRM (ex. each song you buy on iTunes can only play on a certain amount of devices, legally), you will be charged just the same.

 

Well, you didn't get the joke, but on the bright side, you explained to common folk what DRM is... :P

[Skull]

 

Something you guys might find amusing in a somewhat sick way.

[fakeitormakeit2]

Skull, that is brilliant.

[Nenga]

*deletes computer*

 

"What illegal movies? I haven't the faintest idea what you're going on about...."

It really isn't the simple. They can recall up the things you "deleted".

 

I love being prosecuted for my thoughts. Next it's going to be "if you're within 50 feet of a park and you don't have a child/are over 6 you will be charged as a pedophile." At the age of 13 I didn't have money to buy every CD I wanted to listen to. They just need to face it that P2P networking has become socially acceptable. You can't ban it, only put limits on it. Watching a movie on your computer can't compare to seeing the movie at a theater, and while some people will go with the former, most will go with the latter.

[Lenticular_J]

Arr they serious with this [cabbage]?

[Myweponsg00d]

Piracy is terrible for the economy, and turning a blind eye to it is like telling all the people who work for these companies that they don't need to feed their kids.

 

It might be easy to say that movie + music stars dont need the money, and you might be right, but there are hundreds of other people who are involved in the production of the product, and will suffer with continued piracy.

[Hobgoblinpie]

Piracy is terrible for the economy, and turning a blind eye to it is like telling all the people who work for these companies that they don't need to feed their kids.

 

It might be easy to say that movie + music stars dont need the money, and you might be right, but there are hundreds of other people who are involved in the production of the product, and will suffer with continued piracy.

 

I do also believe that piracy is a huge problem, I just think that this isn't the way of going about it.

 

I am not advocating piracy or stealing, but if a person is pirating a movie or a game, then they are unlikely to be a person who would have bought it in the first place, so it doesn't really count as a lost sale. In terms of music however, it is much more critical (I say this because music is smaller and therefore easier to download, whereas games and movies, especially HD movies run into the gigabytes).

[OldJoe]

Piracy is terrible for the economy, and turning a blind eye to it is like telling all the people who work for these companies that they don't need to feed their kids.

 

It might be easy to say that movie + music stars dont need the money, and you might be right, but there are hundreds of other people who are involved in the production of the product, and will suffer with continued piracy.

I agree.

But, legal programs such as torrent clients aimed towards legal file-sharing i.e. sharing Kubuntu or music which an artist decides to release for free, should not suffer due it being mis-used by users. If anything, they should be cracking down on trackers which uphold a majority of copyrighted files.

But again, the problem i have with that is the absurdity of the charges. I know it's different in the USA, but i'll say it from my perspective and how things (basically) work here, it's that you can expect a more severe punishment for an economic crime than a physical crime. However, i'm not saying that economic crimes are just a piss in the ocean in the way it affects the country, but the old politicians needs to get their facts and targets correct.

 

If the old bosses of media companies shifted their focus from hunting Joe towards the mentioned above -and- functioning, well designed, easy-to-use media downloading services they'd be making more money than paying their lawyers.

[Maxingmck]

Anyone seen the episode of south park where the kids get caught pirating lmao

 

"and now his son has to wait another year until he can afford his first hummer limo and mansion"