Congress readies new digital copyright bill:
The draft legislation, created by the Bush administration and backed by Rep. Lamar Smith, already enjoys the support of large copyright holders such as the Recording Industry Association of America. Smith is the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee that oversees intellectual-property law.
Smith’s press secretary, Terry Shawn, said Friday that the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006 is expected to “be introduced in the near future.”
“The bill as a whole does a lot of good things,” said Keith Kupferschmid, vice president for intellectual property and enforcement at the Software and Information Industry Association in Washington, D.C. “It gives the (Justice Department) the ability to do things to combat IP crime that they now can’t presently do.”
Read: This bill gives us even more power to violate civil liberties while acting as the private police arm as the RIAA.
The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.
But one of the more controversial sections may be the changes to the DMCA. Under current law, Section 1201 of the law generally prohibits distributing or trafficking in any software or hardware that can be used to bypass copy-protection devices. (That section already has been used against a Princeton computer science professor, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov and a toner cartridge remanufacturer.)
Smith’s measure would expand those civil and criminal restrictions. Instead of merely targeting distribution, the new language says nobody may “make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess” such anticircumvention tools if they may be redistributed to someone else.
“It’s one degree more likely that mere communication about the means of accomplishing a hack would be subject to penalties,” said Peter Jaszi, who teaches copyright law at American University and is critical of attempts to expand it.
Honestly, this whole thing is leaving me a little speechless. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to make the DMCA even worse… seems I underestimated the love of RIAA cock that these congresscritters have. This bill is amazingly bad, and I have little faith that its badness alone will stop it from getting passed.
On the other hand, maybe this will finally reach the point of absurdity that it will prompt a national conversation on these topics, that thusfar only Lawrence Lessig and Cory Doctorow have been discussing. I’m almost tempted to just say let these idiots have their bill, and lock down their content to the point no one can view it, just to see them go out of business.
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