P2P jail bill moves forward

Found on The Register on Wednesday, 08 September 2004
Browse Filesharing

The bill specifies up to five years' jail for anyone making over a thousand copyrighted works available for download. That's if the infringer is profiting from the action: ordinary P2P users would face up to three years simply for making their collections available.

The committee asks Congress to discourage the P2P networks from deploying the "guns don't kill people" defence.

"Publicly available peer-to-peer file-sharing services can and should adopt reasonable business practices and use technology in the marketplace to address the existing risks posed to consumers by their services and facilitate the legitimate use of peer-to-peer file sharing technology and software."

The bill also makes it illegal to use a video recorder in a cinema to capture a movie.

The chairman of the House Committee which nodded through the measure, Rep James Sensenbrenner (R.-Wis), was paid $18,000 by the Recording Industry Ass. of America to make a trip to Taiwan and Thailand in January 2003, a breach of the House ethics rules, say critics.

Instead of re-thinking their greedy business practices, the entertainment industry simply punches their customers into the face. All this although they make more money (BMI had a record-breaking fiscal year). Despite their whining about losses, they still have money to bribe and buy politicians to force their plans into reality.