Text of legislation: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:s.00167: A lively Slashdot thread: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/05/04/20/1733215.shtml?tid=95&tid=17 --- http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5677232.html Prison terms on tap for 'prerelease' pirates April 19, 2005, 4:33 PM PDT File-swappers who distribute a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet can be imprisoned for up to three years, under a bill that's slated to become the most dramatic expansion of online piracy penalties in years. The bill, approved by Congress on Tuesday, is written so broadly it could make a federal felon of anyone who has even one copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released. Stiff fines of up to $250,000 can also be levied. Penalties would apply regardless of whether any downloading took place. [...remainder snipped...] _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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