House bill would cast FBI as copyright Pinkertons

24/06/2003 Written by Thomas C Greene in Washington

House bill would cast FBI as copy­right Pinkertons
P2P hack­meis­ter Berman pulls out all the stops
765 words

Inter­na­tional ter­ror­ists will be able to sleep eas­ier if US Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Lamar Smith (Repub­li­can, Texas) and Howard Berman (Demo­c­rat, Cal­i­for­nia) have their way.A new bill Smith and Berman are spon­sor­ing on behalf of their entertainment-​industry patrons will divert lim­ited FBI inves­tiga­tive resources from solv­ing seri­ous crimes and pre­vent­ing ter­ror attacks to wag­ing a new War against File Sharing.

The FBI has long served as an unof­fi­cial ‘copy­right 911′ organ at the plea­sure of the media plu­toc­racy, but to date it has fallen largely to the RIAA and MPAA to per­form the leg­work in dis­cov­er­ing copy­right mis­cre­ants. Berman’s bill would ease that bur­den, sad­dling the FBI with respon­si­bil­ity to patrol the Inter­net, mon­i­tor P2P net­works and root out evi­dence of copy­right impro­pri­eties on its own.

Accord­ing to the bill, “The Direc­tor of the Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion shall (1) develop a pro­gram to deter mem­bers of the pub­lic from com­mit­ting acts of copy­right infringe­ment by (A) offer­ing on the Inter­net copies of copy­righted works, or (B) mak­ing copies of copy­righted works from the Inter­net with­out the autho­riza­tion of the copy­right own­ers; and (2) facil­i­tate the shar­ing among law enforce­ment agen­cies, Inter­net ser­vice providers, and copy­right own­ers of infor­ma­tion con­cern­ing activ­i­ties described in sub­para­graphs (A) and (B) of para­graph (1).”

While it’s true that the Feds cus­tom­ar­ily involve them­selves in cases of seri­ous piracy, this leg­is­la­tion is cal­cu­lated to bring them in on petty infrac­tions that would nor­mally be han­dled in the civil courts, like the recent $60K judg­ment against four uni­ver­sity stu­dents who did noth­ing worse than index music files.

There’s great eco­nomic wis­dom in this: by crim­i­nal­iz­ing such minor mis­be­hav­ior, the RIAA taps pub­lic funds to bankroll its petty squab­bles. We should all be so lucky.

In addi­tion to the FBI’s new enforce­ment reg­i­men, the DoJ will be bur­dened with its own Stal­in­ist man­date to ‘edu­cate’ the pop­u­lace about the sacred nature of copy­right:

“There shall be estab­lished within the Office of the Asso­ciate Attor­ney Gen­eral of the United States an Inter­net Use Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram. The pur­pose of the Inter­net Use Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram shall be to (1) edu­cate the gen­eral pub­lic con­cern­ing the value of copy­righted works and the effects of the theft of such works on those who cre­ate them; (2) edu­cate the gen­eral pub­lic con­cern­ing the pri­vacy, secu­rity, and other risks of using the Inter­net to obtain unau­tho­rized copies of copy­righted works; (3) coor­di­nate and con­sult with the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion on com­pli­ance by edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions with applic­a­ble copy­right laws involv­ing Inter­net use; and (4) coor­di­nate and con­sult with the Depart­ment of Com­merce on com­pli­ance by cor­po­ra­tions with applic­a­ble copy­right laws involv­ing Inter­net use.”

Tellingly, there’s no man­date for DoJ to edu­cate the pub­lic about their rights to dupli­cate copy­righted works accord­ing to the doc­trine of fair use. No con­fus­ing dis­tinc­tions are to be made between copy­ing legally-​purchased media, which is a priv­i­lege granted by court prece­dents, and piracy, which is a crime. Indeed, ‘mak­ing copies of copy­righted works from the Inter­net with­out the autho­riza­tion of the copy­right own­ers’ is to be under­stood as a crime hands down.

Only the prob­lem here is, fair use is not and never has been autho­rized by the copy­right own­ers. It’s autho­rized instead by the US Supreme Court. Berman is try­ing to do a leg­isla­tive end-​run around the Sony deci­sion on behalf of his greedy Hol­ly­wood own­ers.

Speak­ing of which, RIAA Pres­i­dent Cary Sher­man gushed about the Smith/​Berman bill in a recent press release:

“The Smith/​Berman leg­is­la­tion will strengthen the hand of the FBI and other fed­eral law enforce­ment offi­cials to address the ram­pant copy­right infringe­ment occur­ring on peer-​to-​peer net­works. This common-​sense, bipar­ti­san bill will help ensure that fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors across the coun­try have the resources and exper­tise to fully enforce the copy­right laws on the books — espe­cially against those who ille­gally dis­trib­ute mas­sive quan­ti­ties of copy­righted music online,” Sher­man trilled.

Berman made him­self famous last year by try­ing to leg­is­late an excep­tion to com­puter mis­use laws for copy­right own­ers wish­ing to hack P2P net­works. Then, only last week, Sen­a­tor Orrin Hatch (Repub­li­can, Utah) did him one bet­ter, rec­om­mend­ing that copy­right own­ers be granted an excep­tion allow­ing them to destroy the com­put­ers of file traders.

But now Berman’s back on top, turn­ing the Fed­eral Police into vir­tual Pinker­tons bound in ser­vice of a car­tel. We expect this of lit­tle third-​world dic­ta­tor­ships rich in gem stones and tribal war­lords, but it’s always a bit star­tling to encounter it in a mod­ern, indus­tri­al­ized nation.