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Taxpayers to Foot The Bill for MPAA Lawsuits?
As DownloadSquad gears up for "Download Like a Pirate Day" this Friday, it appears as though our friends from the MPAA and the boys on Capitol Hill are also hard at work. The U.S. Senate appears ready to give Bill S. 3325 - the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Act of 2008 - the green light as early as today. A quick look at this article by Alex Curtis and this open letter from twelve different advocacy groups will provide some insight into the proposed bill.
Why should you care? Well, for starters, S. 3325 would allow the Department of Justice to sue offenders in civil court. That's a bad thing. A really bad thing.
First, it means taxpayers are footing the bill while the DOJ does MPAA dirty work. Not good. Second, defendants are guaranteed free legal representation. Third, there only has to be a "preponderance of evidence," which is not nearly the same as "beyond a reasonable doubt." As a kicker, it looks as though fines for violation would be doubled.
Over at OpenCongress there appears to be a lot of buzz about this one (64 blog posts and growing), and rightfully so.
Holy crap. The MPAA has filed 30,000 suits over the past five years. Do you really want to pick up the tab?
For the truly interested, you can view the bill's text here. Read up, and then call your Senator. You can use Cause Caller to contact members of the Senate Judiciary, find and call your own senator, or send a fax.
[via BoingBoing]
Comments
5
Subscribe to commentsDanielSep 17th 2008 4:10PM
I don't know if I should laugh or cry...
Since when does DoJ handle civil lawsuits? I thought they handle criminal only...
creepy
bervoSep 17th 2008 8:24PM
We need a major blog to rally everyone for the cause
hazardSep 17th 2008 9:14PM
Well against the nationalization of Fannie and Freddie this kind of thing is peanuts. Kind of ironic that the champion of Capitalism is fast becoming the biggest socialist state in History. You guys in the US are going to have a pretty nasty tax bill very soon.
RususeruruSep 18th 2008 1:14AM
Way to go congress! Hey I have a better idea, let's just socialize the entertainment industry and put everything in the public domain! I mean that way all the citizens are paying for the work, production, marketing, etc so they should own it!
TehseenSep 21st 2008 9:42AM
Instead of going after people who download music, or movies, and wasting tax dollars on court fees and lawsuits, they could just push all that money towards socialized medicine. Oh wait, this is the US Government we're talking about. Never mind.