Recording Industry meets Homeland Security Tom Smith

Does this proposed legislation seem a little, uh, insane?  I know lobbyists draft a lot of bills, but do they need to be so obvious about it?  Life in prison for using pirated software?  Homeland security must report discoveries it makes of pirated copies of Linkin Park to the Recording Industry Association?  Do we really want Homeland Security having legal obligations to Industry lobbying groups?  Doesn’t that make the lobbying group a kind of arm of the state?  Making it a crime to “intend” to violate a copyright?  What does that even mean?  Making it easier to wiretap to detect copyright violation?  So if Homeland security wants to plant a trojan that will track everybody who downloads something from Frostwire, that’s OK?  Why stop here?  Why not let the NSA contract out to RIAA or Microsoft?  Think of how much that would bring into the federal coffers.

I signed up for this Republican ride because I thought it would stop the terrorists from nuking Omaha, not so Hollywood Security could prowl around my PC looking for copies of Hell Freezes Over (just a random example).  I’m in favor of private property as much as the next guy, in fact more, but this notion that every bit of privacy must give way to the rights of Sony and Time Warner to own every song you’ve ever heard of until Jesus comes is starting to get on my nerves.  I mean, if you think I’m talking dirty bombs with Faheed in Oman, fine, listen up.  But if you’re worried my Meatloaf is not kosher, get the hell off my line.  Yes, yes, I know it has not come to that, and no one is proposing quite that. Yet. 
I guess the good news is this obnoxious bill will probably fail like the last one did. 

Google making nice with Red China, Microsoft saying all open source OS’s violate hundreds of their patents, proposals that Homeland Security get involved in copyright enforcement . . . this is starting to creep me out.  More specifically, technology is making it very hard to enforce legacy property rights in music, news, books, etc. etc.  Yes, it’s a problem.  But mutant smallpox viruses being released into subways by crazed Islamo-fascists, it ain’t.  If we are going to let the government poke around in our lives more, it should be for security, not so some Sony executive can buy another Bentley.  I know, I know.  But consider, what if the equilibrium is Hollywood being much richer and more powerful than it already is?  Are you still in favor of, say, putting someone in prison for intending to violate a copyright?  Or Homeland Security keeping track of your downloads?  I’m not.  If our IP regime worked, most computers would not be running the POS that is Windows.  We have not figured out how digital property rights should work.  And with content producers and owners buying Senators and professors as fast as they can write checks, I’m not holding my breath for the model that will explain everything anytime soon.  Add into that that our biggest content generators seem to have on their agenda the destruction of anything that remotely resembles civilization.  What I fear is that harsher and harsher action by the state will be required to shore up these oligopolies that technology wants to dissolve.  I worry about that a lot more than I worry about GigantoCorp not being able to turn a profit on DeathSex Fandango VII.

More here.  “It’s cheaper to buy off a few congressmen than it is to invent something that’s crack-proof.”