[TriLUG] (Slightly OT)New Bill in Congress would make file-swapping a felony

[Tanner Lovelace]

On Thu, 2003-07-17 at 11:04, American Law Abider wrote:
> Oh, my gosh and can you believe that it is also a bill that if you 
> murder someone you can go to jail as well!!  Its called the law, and if 
> people would abide by it there would not be these bills passing around 
> in congress.  From what I read in the bill the posting *copyrighted* 
> material is against the law.  So based on your rationale, it would be 
> legal to "share" material, so I am going to borrow some cars from CarMax 
> and leave them on the side of the road for everyone to use at.  hmmm, 
> that sounds like the same theory of file sharing.  Maybe, I am reading 
> the wrong bill, but copyright is the law and if you break that law by 
> posting it on the internet for everyone to use you should be punished.
> Regards,
> American Law Abider


So, if copyright is already the law, why do we need another law?
You call yourself an "American Law Abider", but are you really?
Do you ever go over the speed limit?  Bzzt!  That's against the law.
Are all the pictures on your website created by you?  If not, oops,
they're almost certainly copyrighted and you've just broken the law.
Are you certain everything you put on your tax return is completely
correct?  Better make sure so you're not breaking the law.  It should
only take several years for you to go through the tax code to make
sure (oh, and it changes every year, so you'd probably better just
read it continuously). 

The fact is that there are so many laws on the books that almost 
everyone as broken one at sometime.  Why do we need another law
that just does the same thing as other laws already on the books?
Also realize that in places like CA with 3 strikes laws that under
this law if you offer 3 copyrighted files (which could be as simple
as this e-mail, which, btw, is (c) me, 2003) you could end up with
life in prison without parole.  Please explain to me how that is
right?  If the record companies really want to stop piracy, they
should work on offering what their customers want.  You can compete
against free, just look at the bottled water industry.

Tanner Lovelace
-- 
Tanner Lovelace | lovelace(at)wayfarer.org | http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
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