Prison for fileswappers -- Dumbest idea ever
As though the prisons aren't already full of poor schlubs who had a small amount of marijuana and aren't rehabilitated but made into hardened criminals, now Rep. John Conyers (D. - Mich.) and Rep. Howard Berman (D. - Calif.) have introduced legislation that would make fileswapping a felony punishable by up to five years prison time and a quarter-million dollar fine. Stupid. Criminal. I'm not saying that P2P users are criminally stupid, but that these Congressmen are. They've taken the Recording Industry Association of America's private crusade against fileswappers, which at least has the slim virtue of not criminalizing filesharing, and made it an issue of state police power. The problem is that the media industry is not adapting to changing market conditions, not that illegal copying is destroying the industry. Jail time for fileswapping? Pure damned idiocy.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at July 17, 2003 11:53 AM | TrackBack