Politicos wary of changes to copyright law

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And furthermore...

there's really REALLY something wrong with laws and/or procedural controls that cause more problems for the law-abiding than for criminals.

In business, for example, numerous laws intended to prevent malfeasance result in large compliance costs on honest businesses - costs which criminal enterprises simply ignore, taking the negligibly-increased risks of prosecution as simply a cost of doing business.

Those who are really costing copyright owners serious money are the criminal enterprises who do it for profit. What they're doing is already illegal; why does anyone think they care if one of the ways they do it is now declared illegal?

Likewise, I have no problem at all with suing people who illegally distribute copyrighted music files, but it's very wrong to criminalize very valuable network sharing technologies merely because some of the content shared is illegal, and I have a very big problem with giving only a privileged few the right to increased cooperation from law enforcement in civil cases.

The record companies could make far better use of their copyright-prevention (and PR) dollars by specifically targeting the uploaders - those who actually infringe the copyright by making the material available - than by carpet-bombing anyone who uses a file-sharing service, without regard to whether they even used it for illegal purposes.

And of course, that's not to mention the completely illegal tactics Sony has been caught at: installing malware on users' machines; lying about it; making users jump through hoops to get it removed; lying about it; providing an ineffective tool that not only fails to remove the offending files but actually opens an even bigger security hole; lying about it; and lying about it.

Posted by: bthomasmo@...   Posted on: 11/16/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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