The Congressional Bill the Hollywood Cartel Doesnt Want You to See

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What's new:

A new bill in Congress would expand restrictions on software that can bypass copyright protections and would grant federal authorities greater wiretapping and enforcement powers.

High Impact

Bottom line:

The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together that would follow on from the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act.Congress readies broad new digital copyright bill

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Congress readies broad new digital copyright bill

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.

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Source: CNet

A DMCA dispute

But one of the more controversial sections may be the changes to the DMCA. Under current law, Section 1201 of the law generally prohibits distributing or trafficking in any software or hardware that can be used to bypass copy-protection devices. (That section already has been used against a Princeton computer science professor, Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov and a toner cartridge remanufacturer.)

Smith's measure would expand those civil and criminal restrictions. Instead of merely targeting distribution, the new language says nobody may "make, import, export, obtain control of, or possess" such anticircumvention tools if they may be redistributed to someone else.

Jason Schultz, a staff attorney at the digital-rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the recording industry would be delighted to have the right to impound records. In a piracy lawsuit, "they want server logs," Schultz said. "They want to know every single person who's ever downloaded (certain files)--their IP addresses, everything.

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7 Years Under the DMCA

And here's the bill

"Read It & Weep