It would appear that we are watching another attempt to move away from what has provided the basis of justice the world over for as long as I can remember, Orwells "thought crime" is being proposed For P2P users.
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9719339-7.htmlAttorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including "attempts" to commit piracy.
"To meet the global challenges of IP crime, our criminal laws must be kept updated," Gonzales said during a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Monday.
The Bush administration is throwing its support behind a proposal called the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which is likely to receive the enthusiastic support of the movie and music industries, and would represent the most dramatic rewrite of copyright law since a 2005 measure dealing with prerelease piracy.
* Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright.
* Create a new crime of life imprisonment for using pirated software.
* Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations.
* Allow computers to be seized more readily.
* Increase penalties for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's anticircumvention regulations.
* Add penalties for "intended" copyright crimes.
* Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America.
As usual the details of what actually constitutes an "intention" to infringe copyright will no doubt be vague and helpful to the RIAA while ensuring respect for justice reaches an all time low, folks are of course entitled to draw their own conclusion for why a wiretap capability is wished for here, likely as not to gather private and personal information ("dirt") and not evidence to silence RIAA critics.
