Headline Feeds
Internet file sharers and those who videotape first-run movies could do jail time under a bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives this week.
"Today's action by the House of Representatives will help thwart the widespread theft of America's intellectual property," Motion Picture Association of America President and CEO Dan Glickman said in a statement.
"Digital film piracy is a menace that poses a dire threat to every American filmmaker," he maintained. "H.R. 4077 will provide law enforcement the necessary tools to go after the heart of film piracy: illegal camcording of movies and the online theft of films on peer-to-peer networks or on similar technologies."
Livelihoods at Peril
"Without such legislative remedies, film piracy could have a disastrous impact on the American film industry and put to peril the livelihoods of men and women who are employed in our industry," he added.
Under the measure now before the Senate for action, anyone making an unauthorized recording of a motion picture in a theater could be fined and serve up to three years in prison for a first offense and up to six years for a second offense.
The legislation also broadens what's considered "criminal copyright infringement" under federal law to include infringement of a copyright by electronic means "with reckless disregard of the risk of further infringement."
Dangerous Precedent
That provision, if it became law, would set a dangerous precedent, according to Philip Corwin, a partner with Butera Andrews in Washington, D.C., and a lobbyist for Sharman Networks, distributor of the file-sharing program Kazaa.
"It removes the need of prosecutors to show willful conduct and would put people in jail based on a negligence standard, which, when you read it, is difficult to know when and where it might apply," he told TechNewsWorld.
Also among the bill's provisions is a $15 million appropriation to fund enforcement of the measure.
Uncle Sam Saddled With Tab
"The bill makes the U.S. Government responsible for paying for enforcing the rights of copyright owners who have the financial wherewithal to enforce their rights in civil actions against copyright pirates," A. Blair Hughes, an intellectual property attorney with McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff in Chicago told TechNewsWorld. "Clearly this provision could save copyright owners millions of dollars."
That boon to copyright holders may not be in the best interest of taxpayers, according to Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco.
"Diverting $15 million of the Department of Justice's budget to essentially pay the entertainment industry's lawyers' fees strikes me as a particularly bad idea right now," he told TechNewsWorld.
Litigating For Cash
"The lawsuits that the recording industry has been bringing, for example, are now breaking even," he said. "The word that I hear is that they're beginning to make money on those lawsuits."
"Whether you think those lawsuits are a good idea or not," he continued, "there's really no excuse for using the American taxpayer's money to subsidize that effort."
Attempts to obtain a comment on the bill from the Recording Industry Association of America were unavailing.
Selective Enforcement
Although the measure could put some teeth into the enforcement of copyright infringement statutes, it still is a dangerous law, argued Manny D. Pokotilow, a partner with Caesar, Rivise, Bernstein, Cohen & Pokotilow in Philadelphia.
Based on his experience trying to obtain Department of Justice support against criminal copyright infringers, he maintained that the agency just doesn't want to get involved. And that attitude will lead to selective enforcement of this kind of law.
"The Justice department will enforce this only when they're told to do it from someone at the top," he told TechNewsWorld. "This is going to be rarely enforced by the Justice Department and only because there's political motivation."
Dark Passage
Opponents of the bill were not only critical of its provisions, but of the method of its passage. On the day the House acted on the legislation, it was placed on the "Suspension Calendar," a launching pad for uncontroversial measures tagged for expedited House action.
"It's criminal that Congress voice voted, with no discussion, a bill that doesn't do a single thing to use the power of peer-to-peer technology to reward individual artists and songwriters and big music companies," Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United in Washington, D.C.
"Everyone should be outraged," he added, "by provisions slipped into the bill that allows ushers and theater managers to detain and question members of the public suspected of recording movies and immunizes them from civil and criminal liability should things get a little rough."
Ever Vigilant
With Congress aiming to adjourn next week and this measure not high on the lawmakers' agenda, chances of passage seem dim, but opponents won't let their guard down.
"We're taking this bill very seriously because it's a direct attack on our
customers," Marty Lafferty, CEO of the Distributed Computing Industry
Association, a P2P industry group in Arlington, Virginia, told
TechNewsWorld. "Its clear intention is to get them to shun P2P and stop
using it."
