Prison terms on tap for 'prerelease' pirates

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Prison terms on tap for 'prerelease' pirates

Postby Class316 on Sun Apr 24, 2005 6:43 pm

File-swappers who distribute a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet can be imprisoned for up to three years, under a bill that's slated to become the most dramatic expansion of online piracy penalties in years.

The bill, approved by Congress on Tuesday, is written so broadly it could make a federal felon of anyone who has even one copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released. Stiff fines of up to $250,000 can also be levied. Penalties would apply regardless of whether any downloading took place.

If signed into law, as expected, the bill would significantly lower the bar for online copyright prosecutions. Current law sanctions criminal penalties of up to three years in prison for "the reproduction or distribution of 10 or more copies or phonorecords of one or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of $2,500 or more."

The bill could be used to target casual peer-to-peer users, although the Justice Department to date has typically reserved criminal charges for the most egregious cases.


http://news.com.com/Prison%2Bterms%2Bon ... g=nefd.top

Declan McCullagh's article on CNET describes everything in lurid detail. Congress has passed a law - one that President Bush says he'll sign - that gives the entertainment industry what it wants, the power to send file sharers to prison for a long time.

As Declan describes it the law is written quite broadly, enough so that "it could make a federal felon of anyone who has even one copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released.

Remember all those Fiona Apple Fans who are sharing her latest album that Sony has refused to release? These fans number in the millions. If Bush signs this bill every one of those individuals; children, mothers, grandparents, even the teenagers of a few of our Congressmen, will be subject to a prison sentence of three years and fines of up to $250,000.


http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/5002/newlaw.html
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