The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007. Is there a Red Herring?

This has been all over the news for a couple of days. Last Monday (it's Thursday morning here in the Philippines), U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales proposed "The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007" to members of Congress.

While I won't go into detail and analyze what's already been publicized about this (see Wired's Proposed Crime of the Century: Attempted Copyright Infringement for a comprehensive analysis), what I will do is point out something that others may have overlooked. I'm focusing on one specific paragraph from their article:

"The bill would also criminalize the intent to commit copyright crimes, which the Justice Department claims brings copyright more in line with other criminal laws. Currently, an infringing crime actually has to have taken place in order for prosecutors to bring a case. The new legislation, if passed, would criminalize the mere attempt."

Does anyone realize the implications this would have on the average Internet user? Current U.S. copyright laws define copyright infringement as a civil matter, except in the case of piracy rings that are covered by another specific law. A civil matter means you can be sued for infringing. What this new bill would do, if passed, would elevate the status of copyright infringement to a criminal matter. All of a sudden, the government can prosecute you AND you can be sued for copyright infringement. Not only that, there are provisions in the bill that would allow the government to seize anything that was used in the infringement.

The most worrisome part of the bill is that attempted copyright infringement will carry the same penalties as actually doing it. That reaches a little too close to home. We all know (or at least most of us) that sharing/uploading copyrighted works without permission is blatant copyright infringement and can result in large settlements in or out of court. We also know that it's not cost effective for the IP holders to chase down and sue those who receive/download copyrighted works because of the limited value of the works in a single instance.

This bill would change all that. The copyright holders would no longer need to sue you. They would just inform law enforcement officials and you'd be incarcerated with only a shred of evidence to support their claims. Just owning a computer with a CD or DVD burner installed would be enough for them to charge you with an "attempt" to infringe on someone's copyright.

Current bittorrent websites continue to index and list illegally distributed copyrighted media over high speed Internet connections. The entertainment industries know they can't do anything about it as the law stands today. The websites are not infringing on copyrights because they are not distributing the media themselves. If you elevate copyright infringement to a criminal status, that changes instantly. The website owners and operators, and even the ISPs that provide the space and bandwidth, can be charged with aiding and abetting a criminal act.

Read the article link I provided. Then think about what I just wrote. Do you see a red herring like I do?

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jer on 2007-05-17 at 3:09 am (Reply)

I too am scared, but I think part of your argument is not quite right.

Take the example of firearms: you can legally own one in the U.S., but they don't go around charging people with attempted murder just because they own one. They'd need some sort of justification for linking you to crime in order to do anything to you.

Simply owning a dvd burner no more means you've attempted to violate copyright than owning a gun means you've attempted to murder someone.

I am pretty curious how they'd prove "attempted" copyright violation online. It would work for people who are selling physical copies of media: simply having a ton of burnt copies of Spiderman 3 with price tag s on them would clearly indicate that you're planning to sell them — but it also means you've duplicated them. So they'd be charrging you with the actual violation rather than the attempted sale of them.

None of it makes any sense…

Comedy Plus on 2007-05-17 at 4:49 am (Reply)

Wow, I do see what you are talking about. I would be in prison for sure. I don't know where 99% of the stuff I post comes from. Yikes. This is downright scary!!!

RT Cunningham | Untwisted Vortex | Philippines on 2007-05-17 at 5:22 am (Reply)

You see, jer, you have to understand what's going on. They tell us half of what they want us to know and don't even mention the other half. Certain private companies/consultants are employed to collect IP addresses. They can spot when direction a file is going. Hypothetically, they could log my IP (if I were in the States), find out it's a static IP, get my address from my ISP and then send the goon squad. A cursory search of my hard drive would discover files in the range of 700 MB to 4 GB. They now have reasonable evidence to prove an attempt to infringe has taken place. Now, they confiscate your hard drive (and the computer it's housed in of course) and use it as evidence against you.

This is totally different from something such as owning a gun to assume attempted murder (which I'm sure they would write a law for if they could get away with it). The constitution protects gun owners whereas the constitution does not protect computer owners (specifically).

It's the beginning of the police state. When rights are taken away and replaced by laws like this, it's only a matter of time before something even more ridiculous gets pushed through. The part that scares me the most is that there are actually people supporting this bill besides the government.

Sorry to be long winded but we already have evidence of laws that do nothing to protect or help the common person. If we say and do nothing, our rights will continue to be eroded by government and big business.

hari on 2007-05-17 at 12:35 pm (Reply)

All a result of unbridled free market capitalism.