Jail Time For P2P Developers?

Kjella writes "A Califorian bill introduced last week would, if passed, expose file-swapping software developers to fines of up to $2,500 per charge, or a year in jail, if they don't take 'reasonable care' to prevent their software from being used to commit crime. C|Net has the story, as well as a link to the actual bill. By the overly broad definition of P2P software, almost any piece of internet software could be liable. This browser is certainly able to download and upload files ('Save as ...' and upload forms). Are Microsoft, Opera and Mozilla.org taking 'reasonable care' to prevent me from exchanging anything illegal? Of course, I never go there, but a friend of my uncle's third cousin's brother told me warez download sites work just fine ..."

Representatives of the People, Indeed

[the_mad_poster (640772)]

They ought to just declare HTTP, FTP, UDP, TCP, and IP illegal. After all, they're used for almost 100% of digital piracy. It would really save the imbeciles that draft laws these days a lot of time and effort if they just took that logical step. It's not like it would be any significant change from what they're doing now anyway since they obviously have no clue how the technology they're drafting against works.

In fact, let's just declare the intarweb illegal and impose fines for anyone who uses it. Then, we can begin our slow, painful descent into obscurity and technological darkness. It'll be great when we finally get so anti-progress that we're back to accusing people of being witches and burning them in the town square again.

Here's a better idea. People could stop voting for candidates who's agenda starts and stops with business interests. They could start voting for people who are actually interested in representing the, well, people. They could stop pretending there's really any such things as a "red" or "blue" state candidate. They could realize that it's time we purged the whole system and got some new blood in - people who actually care about the country and want to see it succeed.

I'm not holding my breath. Holding your government responsible for being.. well... responsible... is hard work, and a lot of Americans don't seem to like that. Just maintain the status quo, even though the status quo isn't really what you think it is anymore.

Re:Representatives of the People, Indeed

[garcia (6573)]

If passed and signed into law, it could expose file-swapping software developers to fines of up to $2,500 per charge, or a year in jail, if they don't take "reasonable care" in preventing the use of their software to swap copyrighted music or movies--or child pornography.

The P2P developers need gun lobbyists on their side! Since when was a gun developed that took "reasonable care" in preventing accidental death? The gun should be able to detect human presence and not fire a round! Yeah, it might cost a lot of money and time to develop that feature but we have to make sure that people don't use it the wrong way!

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has sought to ban illegal downloading on any state computers, including those owned by the state university systems.

Are they talking about State University networks or just their computers? If I am paying tuition *and* a technology fee to directly support the network I am using it as an ISP and thus the University network should not fall under this... If I am using a University purchased computer connected to that network then I see no problems with it.

"We're only asking for reasonable controls. We're not asking for people to create new technology or recreate the wheel."

What's "reasonable"? When they realize that the swappers will immediately get around ANY filtering that the P2P apps do will they decide that the rudimentary filters aren't "reasonable"?

Napster banned individual songs from being traded and everyone started encoding entire albums as a single MP3 to throw them off. People hide, encrypt, and subvert tons of different "safety" measures all the time. When are they going to realize that "reasonable" is more difficult than they believe?

Let the MPAA and the RIAA track down and find the individuals serving these materials up and have them find their REAL NAMES, REAL ADDRESSES, and sue them themselves. I have no problem with them doing some real leg work to get the people at the heart of the issue. I do have a problem with allowing them to just be handed these records by ISPs, etc.

Stop paying off the local/federal governments to pass hasty laws to do your dirty work.

Re:Representatives of the People, Indeed

[radish (98371)]

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has sought to ban illegal downloading on any state computers, including those owned by the state university systems.

Hang on, surely if it's "illegal downloading" it's already banned. Or are they using some other definition of the word "illegal" of which I'm not aware?

Re:Representatives of the People, Indeed

[SirGarlon (845873)]

Here's a better idea. People could stop voting for candidates who's agenda starts and stops with business interests.

They have. Trouble is, there is no one else to vote for. That's why voter turnout is so low.

Re:Voting Choices

[The Snowman (116231)]

I feel sorry for Americans though. I do feel as though you have your backs against the wall when it comes to elections. You are crying out for a coordinated mass lobbying for a 3rd. party candidate - only way to remove the boolean (unary!?) system you use now. You need allot more parties, you actually need complete reform ,maybe via a revolution or something.

Don't feel sorry for us. Most of us deserve the hell we're in.

Anyway, I think we need another revolution, peaceful or not. I truly think we are degenerating into the police state that we always bitched about in the Soviet Union. Our basic freedoms are intact, but the fringe freedoms are being eroded slowly but surely.

Emigration sounds really good right about now.

Re:Representatives of the People, Indeed

[by Anonymous Coward]

"Here's a better idea. People could stop voting for candidates
whose agenda starts and stops with business interests."

You are correct in a theoretical sense, however the mechanics of the US system are stacked against you.

The problem is that the number of congressman is capped at 435 since the year 1913. This means that each congressman serves about a half-million constituents. This was not the intent of the founders. Previous to the year 1913, as the population grew, more congressman were added.

Unfortunately, now as the population grows, so does the power of the individual congressman. When the country was founded, the President himself only served a citizenry of a couple of few million.

We need to increase the size of the House of Representatives ten-fold at least. One congressman per 50K constituents would make the congressman more amenable to the will of the people than to big business lobbyists.

If you want to work for change, than the first goal should be to remove he cap on the number of representatives. Until then, our democratic representation is essentially an illusion.

By the way, this explains why public opinion polls are so often at odds with government policy. In a true representative democracy there should be a rough correlation between opinion polls and the way members of congress act. This is rarely the case nowadays.

Re:Representatives of the People, Indeed

[Badgerman (19207)]

My concern with these laws is that if the greedy but technically ignorant get such laws passed that, yes, they won't be able to truly enforce them - but they'll do a heck of a lot of damage trying.

Re:Representatives of the People, Indeed

[BobPaul (710574)]

Lets compare the ratio of copyright breaking activities VS non copyright breaking activities those protocols have and compare them with p2p's ratio. I think you may find p2p to have a significantly higher ratio

Well, seeing as FTP is the Protocol of choice on much of the back end [wired.com] for piracy groups, FTP probably has a really high ratio of illegal MB/legal MB transfered, probably similar to the ratio seen through Bittorrent. IRC most definatly has more illegal traffic (MB/MB) than legal traffic, but it's also used quite a bit for legal discussions which don't use quite so much bandwidth...

The fact is that the bill in question defines P2P as:
software that once installed and launched, enables the user to connect his or her computer to a network of other computers on which the users of these computers have made available recording or audiovisual works for electronic dissemination to other users who are connected to the network. When a transaction is complete, the user has an identical copy of the file on his or her computer and may also then disseminate the file to other users connected to the network.

Under this definition, IRC, HTTP, and FTP all clearly fall into this category since they can allow you to get a full copy of the file. Technically speaking, a combination of Google, HTTP/FTP and my webbrowser constitutes a P2P network. We may as well just ban the internet, and in this case it's not a straw-man argument but based off of the language of the bill.

Loophole! Loophole!

[Stealth Potato (619366)]

"When a transaction is complete, the user has an identical copy of the file on his or her computer..."

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Just tweak the software to change a couple of bytes in the header during transfer. :-) It's not an identical copy, your honor! You could even use their ignorance of technology to your advantage - bring in the MD5 digests of the two files in court: "Just look at the huge differences between these two unique file identifiers. Coincidence? I think not!" ;-)

WHat about a law...

[ooze (307871)]

making Operating system vendors viable for jail, if they don't take enough care to prevent their OS to be hijacked and used for criminal activities?

Apply the same to guns?

[sifi (170630)]

Does this imply that reasonable steps should be taken by gun manufactures to prevents guns from being used for crimes?

Oh I'm sorry that's unconstitutional...

Re:Apply the same to guns?

[Xpilot (117961)]

Does this imply that reasonable steps should be taken by gun manufactures to prevents guns from being used for crimes? Oh I'm sorry that's unconstitutional...

Well, guns only kill people. P2P software is an enabler for the far, far more heinious crime of stealing money from the RIAA/MPAA.

Re:Apply the same to guns?

[paranode (671698)]

I wish it were unconstitutional but you seem to be misinformed. Many states (who have their own constitutional provisions for arms) are starting to adopt laws to prevent gun manufacturers from being held liable for this kind of thing. However, in the land of Fruits and Nuts where anything goes as long as it's fruity and nutty, gun companies do get sued for this kind of thing. The NRA lobbied to get a federal law passed which would indemnify manufacturers against suits brought about by negligence or improper use (including illegal use). However, the Democrats used the pork barrel tactic to ride some more anti-gun legislature on the end of that bill so the NRA withdrew its support and the bill sank.

Seems like the P2P issue is very parellel (as far as legal rights) to the gun issue. Only most people can't wrap their heads around this because a lot of liberal-minded people who support openness and civil rights conveniently think guns should be excluded because they're 'bad, mmkay'.

Re:Apply the same to guns?

[l0b0 (803611)]

Does this imply that reasonable steps should be taken by gun manufactures to prevents guns from being used for crimes?

Nope, because just as with guns, if you outlaw P2P programs only criminals will have them. And you don't want the crackhead down the street having a bigger stack of DVDs than you do, right...?

Sorry, I had to.

Gun Makers

[hamlet2600 (739627)]

So does this mean we can hold gun makers, people who build cars and knives to the same level of responsiblity? Lets do a little math: Gun Deaths last year approx 16k = $40,000,000 Traffic Deaths last year 43k = $107,500,000 I am just counting deaths, sounds like we could balance the budget if we include anything that might cause a crime also.

all of you nerds should be going to law school

[hsmith (818216)]

So you can combat this better. The next hundred years is going to be a fight for technology, a fight to keep it open, and a fight of companies against "evil commie programmers", since they can't adapt to the new technolgoy

Apparently no one in any sort of power position has the slightest idea what they are talking about. Do we blame gun makers for gun deaths? No, they are tools.

Well then...

[Machine9 (627913)]

...I suggest we make this law to apply to all of the following as well:

Guns and Ammo manufacturers

Car manufacturers

The scientists that developed the atom bomb

The Heads and Board of all government agencies

Your mom

Trees that produce solid branches that _could_ be used as clubs.

etc.

Sometimes the people that create laws need to get their heads checked, I swear.

Re:Well then...

[sepluv (641107)]

All technology and scientific knowledge (from the wheel to the PC) can be used for both good and evil. Some people use it for evil but most use it for good.

Should we now be made criminals for learning knowledge or thinking up ideas? This could only happen in the fascist US of A really; I'm so glad I don't live there.

Mum, mum, America's talking crap again!

[aug24 (38229)]

I take it this idiot senator believes all the world's coders live in the US, right? And that Russians and Poles and Brits and Aussies are all too backward to write P2P code..?

Justin.
Bored with idiot yank politicians from GWB to AS and on.

And while the more intelligent and

[presarioD (771260)]

technologically informed ./ers mock at this new expression of hired corporate legislation, it slowly becomes the law of the land.

Another milestone, another passive moment in the life of the pathetic, gullible, ignorant, socially and politically inept creature called...

... Average American...

Sad, sad, sad, sad...

Guns? What about cigarette Manufacturers?

[WaZiX (766733)]

Even more troubling is that Philip Morris would be allowed to sell a product that proves to be harmfull in all cases but P2P developpers should be fined for making a product that can be harmfull if not employed lawfully? Well not that im surprised, but this shows to be nothing but another proof that laws aren't there to protect people but money... God Bless America!

Good idea

[Junior J. Junior III (192702)]

If we put all programmers in jail, they'll be able to spend ALL of their time programming, instead of wasting their energy worrying about how to pay their bills. They already live in their parents basements, which are aesthetically similar enough that they probably won't even notice.

Re:What about Independents?!?!

[jjleard (575385)]

I'm sure they realize that people are producing content out there and distributing it via P2P. Do you think it's lost on them that eliminating P2P also eliminates some of their competition?

Re:What about Independents?!?!

[finkployd (12902)]

Hollywood bought and paid for the property rights to film-making

The true irony of course is that Hollywood exists only because the filmmakers who first set up shop there did so to be as far away from Thomas Edison as possible. Since Edison owned the intellectual property (patents) on making motion pictures and they wanted to produce movies illegaly without paying him royalties.

So what better group to become the strongest proponants for strict property rights?

Finkployd

Re:There's this thing called a browswer cache

[NoMoreNicksLeft (516230)]

Your hippy rhetoric falls on deaf ears. We at the Starbucks Legislature (formerly California State Legislature) easily ignore those problems that would seem to invalidate our laws. Selective enforcement and a cultivated ignorance of technology, what more does a junior state senator need?