Mobile/PDA About Us Advertise here


		User name	Password

		Not registered yet? Register here. Lost your password? Click here.

Browse by topic

News

EFF worried about Californian anti-piracy bills

19 April 2004 15:38 by Jari Ketola | 3 comments

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has expressed its concerns over two anti-piracy bills introduced in California. According to EFF the bills would dramatically impact Internet users' rights to privacy and anonymity.

California Assembly Bill 2735 and Senate Bill 1506 would require anyone who knowingly disseminates commercial recorded or audiovisual material over the Internet to mark it with his or her name and address or face a possible one-year prison sentence.

"These California anti-anonymity bills would force everyone - including children - to put their real names and addresses on all the files they trade, regardless of whether the files actually infringe copyrights," said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Because the bills require Internet users to post personally identifying information, they fly directly in the face of policy goals and laws that prevent identity theft and spam and protect children and domestic violence victims."

For example, the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) forbids collection of personally identifiable information from children online without parental consent.

"This bill creates criminal liability for sharing a single song or even a portion of a song or movie, but leaves no space for fair uses such as commentary, criticism, parody or educational uses of works," said EFF Activist Ren Bucholz. "This bill is supposed to stop piracy, but it may be the most ineffective and harmful method yet proposed."

EFF encourages all Californians to contact their legislative representatives, and let them know how they feel about the bills.

Source: EFF press release

Permalink to this article

California Senator wants to outlaw P2P (19 January 2005)

« Previous news article
Vivendi launches a tool to monitor campus networks

Next news article »
Over 100,000 registered members

Post your comment

Discuss this article!
pcshateme (Inactive) 19 April 2004 16:30
some big brother controll is needed- but this WAY over the line. [ + quote]
Shegax (Junior Member) 20 April 2004 5:46
Holy crap! I didn't realize things would get this bad! I don't understand, it's like bush saying the war was for something and he didn't find anything. The RIAA are doing the same thing, using one reason that scares people "piracy" and going gung ho with it, with a different reason in mind.........Taking control and making the market take 2 steps back instead of forward. Damn our rights are being stripped one by one, this sucks man. I dunno what to do, if i can do anything [ + quote]
GrayArea (Member) 21 April 2004 12:16
California Uber Alles... Ah, California. Home of Hollywood, Ronald Regan, and of course, THE TERMINATOR, A.K.A. guvnr (Benedict?)Arnold. [ + quote]