The US and other countries have adopted laws providing for the imprisonment of
noncommercial copyright infringers. Post your thoughts, questions, articles etc. here.
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Prosecuting Online File Sharing Turns a Generation Criminal
Seventy-five years ago, Prohibition ended. Just 13 years after launching an extraordinary experiment in social reform, the nation recognized that the battle against "intoxicating liquors" had failed. Organized crime had exploded. Civil rights had been weakened. And an enormous number of ordinary Americans had become "criminals" as they found ways to evade, and profit from the evasion of, this hopeless law.
We're about a decade into our own hopeless war of prohibition, this one against "peer-to-peer piracy." The copyright industry has used every legal means within its reach (and some that may not be so legal) to stop Internet "pirates" from "sharing" copyrighted content without permission. These "copyright wars"—what the late Jack Valenti, former head of the Motion Picture Association of America, called his own "terrorist war" in which apparently the "terrorists" are our kids—have consumed an ever growing amount of legal resources. The Recording Industry Association of America alone has sued tens of thousands of individuals. These suits allege millions of dollars in damages. And schools across the nation have adopted strict policies to block activity that the Supreme Court in 2005 declared presumptively illegal.
I do not support peer-to-peer "piracy." In my books Free Culture and Remix, I condemn explicitly and repeatedly such uses as wrong. And in the hundreds of talks I have given on this subject, I plead with kids not to use technologies in ways that give others a justification for wrecking the Internet.
But though I believe kids should not use the Internet to violate others' rights, I oppose these failed copyright wars: We have not reduced the amount of peer-to-peer file sharing. To the contrary, it has only increased. Nor have artists earned additional revenues from this battle—settlements don't go to the artists but to the lawyers.
Instead, the single certain consequence from this battle has been one our government is strangely oblivious to: its rendering a generation criminal. A concerted campaign by rights holders, politicians, school administrators, and increasingly parents has convinced kids that their behavior violates the law. But that law breaking continues. We call our kids crooks; after a while, they believe it. And like black marketeers in Soviet Russia, they live life getting comfortable with the idea that what seems "obvious" and "reasonable" to them is a crime. They get used to being criminal.
Article written by Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford Law School and a leading figure in the United States and internationally in cyberlaw.
http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/artic...minal.html
See also http://forum.suprbay.org/showthread.php?tid=67706
noncommercial copyright infringers. Post your thoughts, questions, articles etc. here.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Prosecuting Online File Sharing Turns a Generation Criminal
Seventy-five years ago, Prohibition ended. Just 13 years after launching an extraordinary experiment in social reform, the nation recognized that the battle against "intoxicating liquors" had failed. Organized crime had exploded. Civil rights had been weakened. And an enormous number of ordinary Americans had become "criminals" as they found ways to evade, and profit from the evasion of, this hopeless law.
We're about a decade into our own hopeless war of prohibition, this one against "peer-to-peer piracy." The copyright industry has used every legal means within its reach (and some that may not be so legal) to stop Internet "pirates" from "sharing" copyrighted content without permission. These "copyright wars"—what the late Jack Valenti, former head of the Motion Picture Association of America, called his own "terrorist war" in which apparently the "terrorists" are our kids—have consumed an ever growing amount of legal resources. The Recording Industry Association of America alone has sued tens of thousands of individuals. These suits allege millions of dollars in damages. And schools across the nation have adopted strict policies to block activity that the Supreme Court in 2005 declared presumptively illegal.
I do not support peer-to-peer "piracy." In my books Free Culture and Remix, I condemn explicitly and repeatedly such uses as wrong. And in the hundreds of talks I have given on this subject, I plead with kids not to use technologies in ways that give others a justification for wrecking the Internet.
But though I believe kids should not use the Internet to violate others' rights, I oppose these failed copyright wars: We have not reduced the amount of peer-to-peer file sharing. To the contrary, it has only increased. Nor have artists earned additional revenues from this battle—settlements don't go to the artists but to the lawyers.
Instead, the single certain consequence from this battle has been one our government is strangely oblivious to: its rendering a generation criminal. A concerted campaign by rights holders, politicians, school administrators, and increasingly parents has convinced kids that their behavior violates the law. But that law breaking continues. We call our kids crooks; after a while, they believe it. And like black marketeers in Soviet Russia, they live life getting comfortable with the idea that what seems "obvious" and "reasonable" to them is a crime. They get used to being criminal.
Article written by Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford Law School and a leading figure in the United States and internationally in cyberlaw.
http://politics.usnews.com/opinion/artic...minal.html
See also http://forum.suprbay.org/showthread.php?tid=67706
