[lbo-talk] Bush admin wants to criminalize "attempted" copyright infringement

Dwayne Monroe idoru345 at yahoo.com
Tue May 15 16:47:15 PDT 2007


[The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007 would]

<snip>

Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America. That would happen when CDs with "unauthorized fixations of the sounds, or sounds and images, of a live musical performance" are attempted to be imported. Neither the Motion Picture Association of America nor the Business Software Alliance (nor any other copyright holder, such as photographers, playwrights or news organizations, for that matter) would qualify for this kind of special treatment.

[...]

.............

LOL Wut!

Can there be any clearer signal that DHS, once feared to be the word of Orwell's Ministry of Truth made flesh, has become the Department of Whatever the Hell We Can Toss In Today (plus the obligatory kitchen sink)?

No wonder so-called fiscal and paleo-conservatives are increasingly fed up with Team Bush; they're enthusiastic big gov bureaucracy builders.

And note how the RIAA has managed to dramatically up the hysterical ante on copy protection rhetoric and law.

By the lights of this proposed statute, a person could do long time for FTP'ing to Belgium a ripped recording of Britney Spears lip sync'ing (but live, on stage).

Imagine: an unauthorized someone "imports" a live performance of "Hit Me Baby" and DHS springs into action as if a team of atomic rifle armed terrorists is hover biking towards the White House.

If that isn't surreal I don't know what is.

.d.



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