Proposed Crime of the Century: Attempted Copyright Infringement http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/05/ippa07
Back in May 2007 Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested a new bill that would make "attempted copyright infringement" a crime, punishable by up to life in prison. He would need a sponsor in the House or Senate to make Congress consider it, and I don't know if anyone has agreed to sponsor it yet. This is a really scary law, considering how many currently innocuous activities (such as having a spindle of blank CDs next to your computer) could be made into serious criminal offenses. This is an excerpt from the WIRED article:
Essentially, the bill would turn copyright law into something more akin to existing drug laws: The government could seize personal property, wiretaps would become legal for the first time, violators could face life in prison and, in an ambiguous and far-reaching provision, the mere attempt to violate a copyright would become a crime.
The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, proposed by Gonzales on Monday, would amend current U.S. copyright law to give the government far more power to investigate and prosecute cases, expand the scope of what constitutes a criminal act, and would stiffen penalties, including adding life terms for those whose activities cause death.
Among the proposed changes, the bill would make it easier to charge someone as a repeat offender and stiffen the penalty for recidivism. It would expand forfeiture provisions to allow the government to seize any property used in the commission of a crime -- a PC, a home, cash on hand.
Exporting pirated material would also become a crime and the bill would grant the feds wiretapping authority, which it currently lacks. The "attempt" provision, stipulating that mere intent constitutes a crime, means that the law could conceivably be expanded to interpret a computer full of music next to a spindle of blank CDs as an act of piracy.
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On 9/1/07, Leo Mauler [email protected] wrote:
Exporting pirated material would also become a crime and the bill would grant the feds wiretapping authority, which it currently lacks. The "attempt" provision, stipulating that mere intent constitutes a crime, means that the law could conceivably be expanded to interpret a computer full of music next to a spindle of blank CDs as an act of piracy.
If it can be conceived by the mind of a politically ambitious federal attorney, it will be done. Already, criminal statutes designed to be used to fight terrorism are now being used to pile charges on to unrelated criminal cases.
Regretfully, we are approaching a point in our democracy where our leaders tend to feel the best way to resolve any social problem is to criminalize it. The rule is that if we can't medicate it, we should jail it.
On 9/2/07, Matthew Copple [email protected] wrote:
"Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have."
-- President Ronald Reagan
and apparently neither do we.
So, should I move to Canada, Austrailia, NZ, or the UK?
On 9/2/07, David Nicol [email protected] wrote:
On 9/2/07, Matthew Copple [email protected] wrote:
"Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have."
-- President Ronald Reagan
and apparently neither do we. _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list [email protected] http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
On 9/4/07, Luke -Jr [email protected] wrote:
On Monday 03 September 2007, feba thatl wrote:
So, should I move to Canada, Austrailia, NZ, or the UK?
At least Canada and the UK are worse than the US...
I'll have to agree. I know many people (online) who live in Canada, and several who live in the UK. THe Canadians have no idea why Americans are so enamoured of their health care system. If a Canadian needs anything more than basic care or some sort of specialty care, and they have the money, they travel across the border to the U.S. and pay an American doctor to fix them. And, because the Canadian pay system, the better doctors tend to move to the US to work...
But this is getting even further off topic.
Jon.
--- Jon Pruente [email protected] wrote:
THe Canadians have no idea why Americans are so enamoured of their health care system. If a Canadian needs anything more than basic care or some sort of specialty care, and they have the money, they travel across the border to the U.S. and pay an American doctor to fix them.
And if an uninsured American needs basic care, they don't go *anywhere*, or they go help shut down their local hospital by getting extremely expensive E.R. care for which they can't afford to pay. The millions of uninsured people think that the Canadian system of health care is at least better than the U.S. system, since in Canada you might have to wait for a specialist (but not for basic care). Here in the U.S. you might never get basic care no matter how long you wait.
The rich in the U.S. are already discovering that a $132,000 heart bypass operation in the U.S. (thats the operation only, not including tests, hospital stay, X-Rays, etc.), only costs $10,000 in India, and that includes roundtrip plane tickets to India, tests, hospital stay, X-rays, pretty much anything else the primary doctor thinks is necessary, and a side trip to the Taj Mahal. And your Indian doctor either received his medical degree in the U.S. or trained from someone who received his medical degree in the U.S. People with money will always be able to find a system of health care which is better (for them) than the one they are in themselves.
And, because the Canadian pay system, the better doctors tend to move to the US to work...
There's a reason for the Canadian doctor "exodus" which has nothing to do with the "Canadian pay system": Canada requires a two-year residency in order to get a license to practice medicine, and those are in short supply in Canada. Canada does recognize residencies performed in American hospitals, so nearly a thousand new doctors a year tromp over the border to get their residency requirement. This gets picked up by anyone opposed to single-payer health care as "they're leaving to come here because we're better." Meanwhile our U.S. doctors leave medical school in one state and search for residencies in another state, and that isn't counted as "the Massachusetts health care system must be worse than the one in Illinois!"
Quite a few doctors come back to Canada because they are appalled at a health care system which refuses care to people if they cannot pay, and won't even let people, who cannot pay, wait for a specialist.
The "well Canadians have to wait a long time for a specialist so they hate their system" argument rankles with me because I need a specialist and I am uninsured. In Canada I might have to wait six months. Here I will die before I get the specialist, because I will never be able to save up the money for the office visit with the specialist, let alone the tests.
But this is getting even further off topic.
I agree, I just couldn't let these two stereotypes of Canadian and U.S. health care stand without pointing out why they aren't completely true.
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On Thursday 06 September 2007, Leo Mauler wrote:
--- Jon Pruente [email protected] wrote:
THe Canadians have no idea why Americans are so enamoured of their health care system. If a Canadian needs anything more than basic care or some sort of specialty care, and they have the money, they travel across the border to the U.S. and pay an American doctor to fix them.
And if an uninsured American needs basic care, they don't go *anywhere*, or they go help shut down their local hospital by getting extremely expensive E.R. care for which they can't afford to pay.
Please explain how the E.R. care costs the hospital anything. Just because they bill a large amount doesn't mean it's justified.
The millions of uninsured people think that the Canadian system of health care is at least better than the U.S. system, since in Canada you might have to wait for a specialist (but not for basic care). Here in the U.S. you might never get basic care no matter how long you wait.
Speaking as the head of an uninsured family, I have come to the conclusion that insurance, as well as hospitals and doctors, are mostly a scam anyway. On the occasion that we have gone to the hospital/doctor, it turned out to be a total waste of time. The E.R. takes hours to admit (so much for an emergency!), and once we're in they take hours more to tell us they have no clue what might be wrong. For our daughter's birth, they totally disregard our birth plan (actually, we were informed we would have to wait for another doctor, who was currently giving birth herself, if we did not throw away the plan) and then they were going to do all sorts of terrible things with our daughter if I didn't happen to follow her around and stop them.
Quite a few doctors come back to Canada because they are appalled at a health care system which refuses care to people if they cannot pay, and won't even let people, who cannot pay, wait for a specialist.
And where is this? Last I checked, it was illegal for hospitals in the US to deny you care because you couldn't pay.
On 9/6/07, Luke -Jr [email protected] wrote:
Please explain how the E.R. care costs the hospital anything. Just because they bill a large amount doesn't mean it's justified.
And where is this? Last I checked, it was illegal for hospitals in the US to deny you care because you couldn't pay.
I think you answered your own question there. ER is the single most expensive department in a hospital because they have to give care, and they admit people who are uninsured. They also run the longest hours, have one of the highest risks, and are generally very expensive to operate. Most hospitals make up for this loss by inflating other prices (thus the previous comment about a surgery being less expensive in other countries...).
And about the part where it's illegal to deny care...he was referring to a specialist. ER care is open to anyone regardless of insurance or payment. I do not believe this applies to other departments of privately funded hospitals, or to specialists.
--- Nathan Cerny [email protected] wrote:
On 9/6/07, Luke -Jr [email protected] wrote:
Please explain how the E.R. care costs the hospital anything. Just because they bill a large amount doesn't mean it's justified.
And where is this? Last I checked, it was illegal for hospitals in the US to deny you care because you couldn't pay.
I think you answered your own question there. ER is the single most expensive department in a hospital because they have to give care, and they admit people who are uninsured. They also run the longest hours, have one of the highest risks, and are generally very expensive to operate. Most hospitals make up for this loss by inflating other prices (thus the previous comment about a surgery being less expensive in other countries...).
And about the part where it's illegal to deny care...he was referring to a specialist. ER care is open to anyone regardless of insurance or payment.
The 1986 E.R. law stipulates that emergency rooms cannot turn anyone (who presents with an injury or illness) away for inability to pay. However, all they are required to do by law is stabilize your condition. Any care over and above stabilizing your condition is not required, and cash-strapped hospitals frequently send the newly-stabilized patient out the door with a referral everyone knows the patient will never be able to afford.
Example: you have no insurance and specifically no dental coverage. A tooth in your mouth becomes decayed and then infected. You go to the E.R. for care. All they are required to do by that 1986 law is bring down the inflammation and cure the infection. The appropriate minimum non-emergency care would be to take dental X-rays and extract the tooth, but that is not required to stabilize the patient (and is expensive to boot), so the hospital does not perform this additional expensive service. This results in the same patient bouncing in and out of hospital E.R.s with the same re-infected tooth. I think I'm more or less quoting something which happened in Missouri in the past few years, but I might be mistaken.
Contrast this with Canada: you wouldn't have the infected tooth to begin with because it would have been treated back when it was a cavity. The Canadian system allows people to get their teeth taken care of by a dentist long before the patient (in the U.S.) would become a chronic drain on local E.R.s.
Canadian doctors are going back to this system precisely because they can know that they can make a specialist referral and that the patient will see this specialist as soon as possible. Here in the U.S. the patient will put off the specialist until s/he can afford the specialist, which could result in the patient never seeing the specialist. Six months in Canada is a lot shorter wait than eternity in the U.S.
I do not believe this applies to other departments of privately funded hospitals, or to specialists.
That is correct. When you go to see a specialist, you may have a terminal illness but it is not going to cause your immediate death during the specialist visit, so he is not required to see you without arranging payment in advance.
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--- Luke -Jr [email protected] wrote:
On Thursday 06 September 2007, Leo Mauler wrote:
And if an uninsured American needs basic care, they don't go *anywhere*, or they go help shut down their local hospital by getting extremely expensive E.R. care for which they can't afford to pay.
Please explain how the E.R. care costs the hospital anything. Just because they bill a large amount doesn't mean it's justified.
I'm not sure I understand the concept of proving that a business that hands out their expensive products for free is losing money on the transaction. "Self-evident" is the word that springs to mind.
E.R. care isn't just a doctor and two nurses waving their hands and saying "Let him be healed!", they are using material goods and stressing out the parts of machines to accomplish their goals. If the bills for those goods go unpaid by the uninsured, even you should agree that this has cost the hospital something. Even if we toss out doctor and nurse salaries (as many hospitals have been forced to do), the rest of the requirements for care are still there and still need to be paid for.
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On 9/6/07, Leo Mauler [email protected] wrote:
something. Even if we toss out doctor and nurse salaries (as many hospitals have been forced to do), the rest of the requirements for care are still there and still need to be paid for.
<comedian> Thank you, thank you, be sure to tip your doctors and nurses; I'll be here all week </comedian>
On 9/3/07, feba thatl [email protected] wrote:
So, should I move to Canada, Austrailia, NZ, or the UK?
You should vote.
My quote below is wrong. Will and moral courage are formidable, but the ballot box rules. Rule the ballot and rule the country. Don't vote and be ruled.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/dubiousquotes/a/stalin_quote.htm
On 9/5/07, Matthew Copple [email protected] wrote:
You should vote.
the ballot box rules. Rule the ballot and rule the country. Don't vote and be ruled.
You should vote.
See, the thing is just voting doesn't mean you automagically win. Given the majority of people are stupid, I think it's obvious why are where we are now.
On 9/5/07, David Nicol [email protected] wrote:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/dubiousquotes/a/stalin_quote.htm
On 9/5/07, Matthew Copple [email protected] wrote:
You should vote.
the ballot box rules. Rule the ballot and rule the country. Don't vote and be ruled.
-- I'm gonna buy me a Mercury And cruise it up and down the road _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list [email protected] http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
On 9/5/07, feba thatl [email protected] wrote:
You should vote.
See, the thing is just voting doesn't mean you automagically win. Given the majority of people are stupid, I think it's obvious why are where we are now.
You're right. Voting doesn't guarantee a win. Not voting, on the other hand, absolutely guarantees a loss. Any chance is better than no chance.
Is mentioning Stalin close enough to say that this conversation is getting into Godwin's Law territory?
--- David Nicol [email protected] wrote:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/dubiousquotes /a/stalin_quote.htm
On 9/5/07, Matthew Copple [email protected] wrote:
You should vote.
the ballot box rules. Rule the ballot and rule the country. Don't vote and be ruled.
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On Wednesday 05 September 2007, Matthew Copple wrote:
On 9/3/07, feba thatl [email protected] wrote:
So, should I move to Canada, Austrailia, NZ, or the UK?
You should vote.
My quote below is wrong. Will and moral courage are formidable, but the ballot box rules. Rule the ballot and rule the country. Don't vote and be ruled.
Voting is a scam. It's fixed so only two "parties" have a chance, and those two parties are one in the same group just putting on a deception so we think there's a choice... and even if a third party did get enough votes to win, they have the power to cover it up.
On Sunday 02 September 2007, David Nicol wrote:
On 9/2/07, Matthew Copple [email protected] wrote:
"Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have."
-- President Ronald Reagan
and apparently neither do we.
The problem is that this weapon empowers the country more than it does the political leaders of said country.
You just didn't understand who the adversaries were in this statement.
David Nicol wrote:
On 9/2/07, Matthew Copple [email protected] wrote:
"Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have."
-- President Ronald Reagan
and apparently neither do we.
Look, it was just a news item related to the discussion of sk0t's legal woes. I didn't mean for it to erupt into a political discussion that went *beyond* copyright law.
--- Jim Herrmann [email protected] wrote:
You just didn't understand who the adversaries were in this statement.
David Nicol wrote:
On 9/2/07, Matthew Copple [email protected]
wrote:
"Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have."
-- President Ronald Reagan
and apparently neither do we.
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Whole content snipped to appease the Snippyobsessed.
Seriously speaking though, the concept of criminality before an overt act is an affront to sanity. Conspiring as a group could not be applied to an individual absent a chain of witting communication between suspects. And suspect is the proper term pending a conviction. Oh, one can mock up straw dogs such as extant statues on burglar's tools or "presumptive intent" EX: prohibited acts "doorknob shaking" or "handle pulling". All of which center on the concept of an ACTION of no innocent possibility, or tooling AND other factors to show probable cause. Which must be held up through a standard set of due processes to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt. SO one would sadly concede that since due process has been cremated upon the altar of Paleoconservative "Anti-Terrorism" rhetoric all our rights that *HAD* been protected by the late lamented "due process" are now nonexistant. Point being that in the de facto incineration our bill of rights has suffered there's no longer even a need for pretense of law. SO all that needs to happen is someone "in power" arbitrarily declaring _you_ a "Padilla" and it's GAME OVER.
The part that makes all I have said on topic is that since "Open Source" software by design and inherent nature renders hidden code up for disclosure if only we remain vigilant. Which raises one closing zinger that will title my next thread.
" IS using closed source software contributory negligence to malfeasance's caused by exploits?"
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David Nicol -
feba thatl -
Jim Herrmann -
Jon Pruente -
Leo Mauler -
Luke -Jr -
Matthew Copple -
Nathan Cerny -
Oren Beck