Lawmakers Ask Ashcroft To Waste Time On File Traders
from the better-things-to-do-with-their-time dept
It's amazing how ridiculous many of our elected officials are. Apparently, they sent a letter to John Ashcroft asking him to have the Justice Department go after file traders and prosecute them as federal criminals. This is, perhaps, the most ridiculous waste of federal government time in quite some time. To think that the Justice Department should waste its time on a bunch of kids who want to listen to music.
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It is a violation of law...
I agreed with you, Mike Masnick, when you argued that shutting down Napster, Audiogalaxy, and attempting to shut down the Gnutella clones was a bad idea. It's like outlawing photocopiers or tape recorders because they could be used to violate copyright.
But what is a copyright holder to do to settle his/her grievence with online file trading?
I argue: go after the copyright-violators. They're the ones who are actually breaking the law. It's a bad idea to disrupt new technologies, but a good idea to enforce existing laws.
That's where the showdown really needs to occur anyway: Between the people who are pushing the frontiers of copyright (i.e. Kazaa users) and the copyright holders. Sue, deprive and imprison your customers -- it's a great buisness model!
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Re: It is a violation of law...
However, my problem with this is having these things be considered a federal crime, worthy of wasting Justice Department resources to go after copyright violators.
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Re: It is a violation of law...
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Re: It is a violation of law...
It's criminal to violate copyright. Send in the feds. A few well publicized prosecutions, and then we'll replace the national debate on when to invade Iraq with a national debate on the justice of copyright. I'd say there's nothing better for getting this semi-obscure issue out of the backwaters of techdirt and slashdot and into a newspaper that my grandparents read.
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Re: It is a violation of law...
Having said that, the ACLU and/or EFF would bring their resources to the table, also. They would, among other things, trot out artists who have been exploited by the RIAA, and show that the RIAA is an oligopoly that reaps rewards from price fixing and arguably collusive behavior. The RIAA suddenly doesn't look so good in the general public's eyes.
If well spun, the ACLU / EFF could reduce the issue into a Bad Corporation abusing The Little Guy argument. American politicians right now are scrambling for ways to identify with the little guy and ditch their perceived big business connections. Give them a bandwagon to jump onto.
Right now anti-corporate sentiment in the American population is about as high as I've ever seen it. Capitalizing on this sentiment would, in my opinion, be the only way to gain copyright laws tolerable to the Slashdot set. The way to capitalize on this sentiment is to bring the issue to the mainstream public's attention ASAP.
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