Constant Opinions

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has proposed a law that would make even attempted copyright infringement would mean facing severe penalties. I don’t just mean jail time; the proposal would include penalties similar to what they do for drug offenses.

The government could seize personal property, wiretaps would become legal for the first time, violators could face life in prison and, in an ambiguous and far-reaching provision, the mere attempt to violate a copyright would become a crime.

That’s mighty extreme for copyright infringement. And how far would the government want to go in enforcing such a law? And then there’s…

Exporting pirated material would also become a crime and the bill would grant the feds wiretapping authority, which it currently lacks. The “attempt” provision, stipulating that mere intent constitutes a crime, means that the law could conceivably be expanded to interpret a computer full of music next to a spindle of blank CDs as an act of piracy.

Yes, I would like to see stiffer penalties for copyright infringement. This isn’t the solution, however. This is a power grab that would lend itself too easily to abuse.

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Filed under: Controversial