A new proposed set of amendments to the US's loathsome DMCA — the 1998 copyright that paves the way to censorship, arresting security researchers, and creating monopolies for entertainment and DRM companies — will make the law even worse. The Department of Justice has proposed the amendments to Congress, and IPac and others have action-pages up that will help you fight them. Texas's Lamar Smith sponsored a bill to pass the amendments into law. If you have the poser to campaign for Smith's opponent, the 2006 elections would be a good time to do so — that guy's evidently so deep in Hollywood's pockets that he'll send Americans to jail for downloading music.
The new law would send you to prison for attempting to infringe copyright. It would make it even more illegal to own tools that could be used to remove copy-restrictions, like DVD-ripping software — it could even bust Symantec for making software that removed the Sony rootkit malicious software that the company distributed with its CDs last year:
This is a concerted effort to escalate Hollywood's war on America by creating a generation of criminals and sending them off to jail. That's right: the "Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006" (IPPA) would double the authorized prison terms for existing copyright infringement, create a host of new offenses, and establish a division within the FBI to hunt down infringers. The Members of Congress in the pockets of the Hollywood cartels want to divert $20 million a year and FBI agents from fighting real criminals so they can go after people without computers.
(via Digg)
