Gonzales proposes new crime: “Attempted” copyright infringement
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.
“To meet the global challenges of IP crime, our criminal laws must be kept updated,” Gonzales said during a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Monday.
The Bush administration is throwing its support behind a proposal called the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which is likely to receive the enthusiastic support of the movie and music industries and would represent the most dramatic rewrite of copyright law since a 2005 measure dealing with pre-release piracy.
Dig this:
* Criminalize “attempting” to infringe copyright. Federal law currently punishes not-for-profit copyright infringement with between 1 and 10 years in prison, but there has to be actual infringement that takes place. The IPPA would eliminate that requirement. (The Justice Department’s summary of the legislation says: “It is a general tenet of the criminal law that those who attempt to commit a crime but do not complete it are as morally culpable as those who succeed in doing so.”)
What the hell does that mean? Does that mean if someone even downloads and installs a copy of any P2P program that they’re automatically breaking the law? It damn well sounds like it to me! And you’d better wake up fast to this because this Administration is just totally insane!
Need some more proof? Here’s the other part:
* Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations. Wiretaps would be authorized for investigations of Americans who are “attempting” to infringe copyrights.
I don’t think it’s out of the question this Administration would finagle this into somehow being a Homeland Security issue. And when that happens, they don’t need to get any warrants for their taps.
We are being betrayed into slavery!
This is tyranny!
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