Congress Declares War on File Leakers

[HardElection]

An anonymous reader submits "Bush is expected to sign a law that essentially makes it a crime punishable by up to three years in jail for a user to put a single 'copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released.' Whichever side you're on in the copyright debate, you have to agree this legislation is draconian and excessive, to say the least."...

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/20/1733215&from=rss

[tridim]

1. Well that's a good way to lock up lots of "elite" college students

AKA Liberals.

[HardElection]

3. Exactly

He knows most republicans are not tech savy so they are under the radar I hope this story gets alot of attention at DU and I hope people like howard dean speaks openly in opposition of this "draconian" law.

[Goldom]

2. Whatever they tell you, don't forget this:

There are NO laws against downloading files. Ok, well maybe some I don't know, but what I mean is, you can download all the pirated stuff you want, and they can't touch you, as long as you don't -share- any yourself. Distributing copywritten material is illegal. Recieving it isn't. Unless maybe if you payed for it, then it's a bit more gray...

Of course, this is really only a technicality, if everyone went by this, there'd be no one sharing anything anyway. It's what I do, I only share music files and such that aren't sold in America (which, actually, is quite a lot of what I have), and thus the RIAA can whine all they like, and it doesn't matter one bit, cause it isn't theirs.

[acmejack]

4. The law is named Family Entertainment and Copyright Act

It would have the appropriate acronym if we can figure out how to append an L to it. FECA+L

[beyurslf]

5. Build more prisions! Lots more prisions. Lock em and throw away the

key.

[seabeyond]

6. are they gonna start breaking down our doors to check n/t

[B Calm]

7. Too Bad he don't declare war on White House Leakers

[sugapablo]

8. They love war

They've already declared war on the middle class...

[mmonk]

9. Not much detail

in that. Exactly what do they mean? It would be in the public domain. I could see alot of problems with this unless someone is downloading it for sale or some sort of unlawful distribution.