[FC-discuss] Oppose New Outrageous Copyright Legislation

[Ringo Kamens]

Dear Fellow Activists,

A proposed bill called the "Intellectual Property Protection Act of
2007" would allow civil seizure (using the Drug Abuse Prevention and
Control Act procedure), allow prosecution for attempted infringement,
require restitution, allow wiretapping in copyright cases, require
notification of importation of infringing goods, and allow life
imprisonment if a infringing good causes death.
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Sample Letter

I am writing to urge you to vote against the Intellectual Property
Protection Act (IPPA) of 2007, which was just proposed by the
Department of Justice. This bill is a capitulation to the copyright
industry at a time when copyright law is already harsher than it has
ever been. Copyright law is meant to be a temporary concession to the
author in exchange for greater production, as stated in the
Constitution ("To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by
securing for limited Times to Authors [...] the exclusive Right to
their respective Writings"). This nation's original copyright law
provided for a term of only 14 years with an optional 14 year renewal;
it now lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. This is just
one example of how the copyright law has morphed into a one-sided
grant to the copyright holder (which is now usually the publisher
rather than the author) in exchange for questionable benefit to the
public.

The IPPA further abuses this bargain by increasing the penalty for
crimes with little tangible harm. Most seriously, it creates a new
crime of attempted copyright infringement. This means someone could be
subject to a year in prison for even attempting to copy a single music
file without permission. In addition, the bill allows a broad range of
civil forfeiture provisions. For example, it allows the seizure not
only of infringing copies, but also any technology used to make the
infringing copies. That means copying a music file could allow
someone's entire computer system to be seized, potentially costing
them legitimate business. Then, the bill also requires paying
restitution for the same violation. It is difficult to justify
restitution at all when the copyright holder has not lost anything
concrete (only hypothetical "lost sales"); providing for both
restitution and forfeiture for copyright infringement is
unconscionable.

The bill also further legitimizes the unethical anti-circumvention
provision of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA's
anti-circumvention provision has already effectively made fair use
illegal for works with DRM (Digital Restrictions Management)
technology. It is no longer always legal to move such a copyrighted
work from one device to another, extract part for criticism, or even
play it if you must reverse engineer technology to do so. Such an
unethical law can not be granted extra enforcement tools. Yet the IPPA
liberally penalizes violations of the DMCA. It once again allows
forfeiture of the tools used for anti-circumvention. This means simply
playing a legally purchased media file with unauthorized technology
(such as the GNU/Linux operating system) would again allow the entire
computer system to be seized.

There are other unjustifiable provisions in the act. For instance, it
grants music copyright holders the special privilege of being notified
of the import of infringing material. It provides for life
imprisonment for the distribution of infringing works that negligently
cause death (though this would certainly violate existing law); there
is no penalty for legal works with the same effect, even though the
infringing work may be an exact copy. Wiretapping would be allowed for
copyright infringement investigations, even when the suspect has only
attempted to infringe copyright, regardless of scale; this is a waste
of a tool that is meant for serious crimes.

Please oppose the IPPA in any form and work to restore balance to copyright law.
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How to find your representatives

  1. Go to senate.gov and use the "find your senator" drop-down list
at the top right
  2. Go to house.gov and click the "write your rep" button at the top left

Thanks for all you do,
The Team @ BinaryFreedom.info