New US Digital Copyright Bill?
A CNet.com news article describes a new bill called “The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006″ by Rep. Lamar Smith that will increase the restrictions already imposed by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is now being push through US congress.
For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite. A proposed copyright law seen by CNET News.com would expand the DMCA’s restrictions on software that can bypass copy protections and grant federal police more wiretapping and enforcement powers …
The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.
This law is pretty tought as it allow wiretaps for computer crimes (cripes big brother is watching), increase copyright infringement penalties to up to 10 year in prison, creates civil asset forfeiture penalties for anything used in copyright piracy (good bye DVD-R printing equipment, high-end servers, ink-toner refilling machines), and copyright holders can impound user information (they want our server logs).
I wonder how other countries (including the Philippines) would react to this. Most countries are pressured to follow suit and “protect” the labels. In the Philippines, the Optical Media Board (OMB) is the Big Brother when it comes to piracy and they do have quite a bit of power.
