Police States of America :p

[owsf2000]

According to slashdot, you guys are nearly about to have your own copyright cops finally. These will be people paid by your tax dollars to sue you on behalf of private corporations. They will have the ability to seize your hardware.

From Slashdot's summary:
"So while the Senators believe this is needed to combat foreign copyright infringement cartels, it's entirely likely that innocent people will be harmed by this law."

Since these copyright cops will have no power over other countries any more than any other american law, I fail to see where it does what the senators are thinking it'll do. You know, short of "Exporting democracy" to those countries first.

Comments

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

In other words, the government is completely fucked up as usual.

So, it looks like they're basically taking the asinine stuff that the RIAA/MPAA is already doing, and replacing them with government employees, paid by taxpayers of course, who will do the exact same asinine stuff. That's about the gist of it, right?

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

Except that now you'll have law enforcement officers potentially knocking on your door one day and taking every piece of computer hardware you own (likely even things that would never in a million years have something to do with infringment - like say monitors.) Additionally, if you live with someone else who did the infringement, your stuff may and probably will be taken as well regardless. (Think the War on Drugs scenarios.)

This in addition to your government launching CIVIL lawsuits against you on behalf of the big corporations, where your own tax dollars will essentially pay for the top lawyers of the country to wreck your life beyond repair. I'm assuming the money "gained" through all this, including the fencing of your detained computer equipment to the highest bidder (or at least friends of the cops who seized it) will be given to the big corporations... or just pocketted for the government themselves. That'll help fund another 5 minutes in Iraq.

But don't worry. This is needed to stop foreign black markets! It's kind of like the War on Drugs you guys had years back. It's just being applied to corporate interests and copyright infringement.

People aren't kidding when they say "America has the best government money can buy."

But I'm sure they wish they were.

I think this still has to get actually signed in still, so there's a chance (yeah right >_>) that it could be overturned, but it's already passed the senate vote. I seriously hope I'm overthinking the ramifications, but for some reason it really doesn't feel like I am. And it scares ME that I think it's perfectly normal that the government is even considering it let alone going through with it.