Congress Moves to Criminalize P2P_
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62830,00.html
This is a good example of idiots/politicians going too far. Making protocols illegal on the WWW has to be the dumbest idea ever. This will open a can of worms on the legality of such moves.
This is a good example of idiots/politicians going too far. Making protocols illegal on the WWW has to be the dumbest idea ever. This will open a can of worms on the legality of such moves.
Comments
Policies of the last quarter century have allowed the top 5% of this nation to double their wealth. Our politicians no longer seeks to answer to their constituents that pay no money towards their campaigns.
The bills come at a time when the music and movie industries are exerting enormous pressure on all branches of government at the federal and state levels to crack down on P2P content piracy
In a proper functioning Republic this should never happen.
So far in 2004, Leahy has received $178,000 in campaign contributions from the entertainment industries -- the second-biggest source of donations to Leahy behind lawyers. Hatch has received $152,360.
And without Campaign Finance reform expect a lot of the above.
Originally posted by talksense101
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62830,00.html
This is a good example of idiots/politicians going too far. Making protocols illegal on the WWW has to be the dumbest idea ever. This will open a can of worms on the legality of such moves.
Maybe they will get to this right after they get around to. banning DHMO?
The fight against P2P will only be won by the RIAA/Congress/Whoever if the govt can proceed with charges against ISPs who will not block P2P ports on their equipment. If there IS a legit use... like there is with say, guns, then there will be a tough fight for an outright ban. This gets into some serious sticky re: government imposition on private property. (yes, I know they do it all the time)
Looks like some politican wants a donation from the music lobby in time for November. (Music Lobby:
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/002700.html
Seems Senator Hatch's claim that P2P networks
are running a conspiracy in which they lure children and young people with free music, movies and pornography
might miss the point that porn is copyrighted so in dollar terms this legislation should benefit the porn industry, at least in theory.
Also worth noting http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/002713.html
Under 18 USC 2516(3), you can get a wiretap for any "electronic communication" (but not for wire or oral communications) as long as "the interception may provide or has provided evidence of any Federal felony." Copyright infringement under 17 USC 506 is a felony. Under the proposed PIRATE Act, the government has options with regard to people who violation 17 USC 506 (Criminal copyright infringement). The government can criminally prosecute them or bring a civil suit. Either way, the government can use a wiretap to gather evidence for their case.
Under a regular civil suit for copyright infringement by means of file sharing, the copyright holder can only observe that the infringing files are available for download. They can't really tell how many people have downloaded them, if any. Furthermore, copyright holders have no way of going after people who are only downloading files and not uploading them. Wiretaps to the rescue. The RIAA may not be permitted to wiretap file sharers, but the government certainly can. The RIAA must be salivating at the prospect.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, someone's actual trying to look at the empirical data http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/
This study finds that file sharing has had little or no effect on the recent downturn in music sales. And yet under this proposed legislation, US taxpayers would end up funding the RIAA's campaign against file sharers.
Clever! Killing a few birds with one stone there.
Originally posted by hmurchison
The US Gov no longer exists "for the people" it exist "for the corporation".
Here, here. This pisses me off to no end.
Insert long rant here...
Originally posted by hmurchison
Policies of the last quarter century have allowed the top 5% of this nation to double their wealth.
Since the richest 5% in the US shoulder more than half the US tax burden according to the IRS via ABC News, this makes perfect sense. If they double their wealth, the general revenue of the US government goes up 50%. Now, whether that money is being used effectively and wisely is a topic for AO, but the point is that allowing people to earn more money should be a top priority of the US, and not frowned upon.
Originally posted by Guartho
Since the richest 5% in the US shoulder more than half the US tax burden according to the IRS via ABC News, this makes perfect sense.
While I'd be willing to admit that to some degree popular perception might distort the tax burden of the wealthy, the IRS figures stated by Stossel here don't tell the full story either. The wealthy, especially the super wealthy, have many ways of shielding income and other forms of wealth from being considered as taxable income. A lot of wealth is completely off the radar.
Consider these figures. According to those figures, the top 5% of wealth holders (a different, and wealthier group than the top 5% of income tax payers) own 50% of the wealth in the US. That's like one person in twenty having as much wealth as the other 19 out of 20 combined.
If these top 5% were to pay 50% of all US taxes, that would merely be "breaking even" in a completely non-progressive tax system. But the top 5% of wealth holders only partially overlaps with the less wealthy top 5% of taxable income earners. The top 5% of wealth holders have large amounts of untaxed wealth, and therefore pay an counter-progressively smaller portion of their wealth as taxes.
Further consider that these are 1997 data, before the current round of lopsided Bush tax cuts were enacted, and I'd say that there's some fairly solid ground for thinking that the rich are truly getting off easy when it comes to taxes. Not only that, but the rich getting richer won't do much if anything to help increase tax revenues. Only if the rich get richer in fully taxable ways -- which the rich work very hard not to do -- will the public as a whole benefit from their wealth increasing. (Unless of course you wish to believe in fairy tales like "trickle down".)
www.stopfcc.com
Who knows, if we make one inroad, that could open the door to other inroads (maybe the road that happens to concern you most)?