THE NEW look Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) seems to be giving the world an unusual moral code.


Details of the upgraded act, which has the blessing of the music and film industry and the Bush administration, are now coming to light. It appears that the DMCA will have a maximum sentence of ten years inside for the crime of software and music piracy.
It will also give the FBI the powers to wiretap suspected pirates.

Although sentencing varies in the US, the new law does send a very strange message as to what the government considers 'bad' in the 21st century.

For example assaulting a police officer will get you five years, downloading child porn will get you seven years, assaulting without a weapon will get you ten years and aggravated assault six years.

So in other words if you copy a Disney CD and sell it you will be in the same league as a paedophile who is distributing pictures of sexual attacks on children.

If you copy Craig David's CD you get ten years, but if you punch him in the face and pummel him into a seven day coma you will only get six. You are more likely to get the respect of the prison population with your six year sentence as well.
More here. µ

Read it and weep..... further proof that our society values the almighty dollar more than life.

omg.. thats just messed up

Wrong on so many levels.

So when I'm copying my daughters CD I bought for her for in the car, and we all know how kids scratch up CD's because they're OH SO fascinating, they're saying me backing it up as my own personal copy would send me to prison?

No it's not the copying it is the copying for means of redistribution.... (profit)

And punishments for crimes vary.
One person being arrested for aggrivated assault may get community service, another may serve years in jail.

Oh okay lol. So I don't need to worry now, *whew*. I figured since I had bought the CD, the major artist had gotten what they wanted already, no crime in backing it up for personal use. *shrugs*

But the crime would be, If I made copies for all my friends and sold them for... a penny!

Or if you stole the movies/music off of the internet without paying for it/them.

We've all been seeing this for many,many years. Its becoming more of a problem so they are increasing the penalty.

Not to mention that if you got caught with enough LSD, you would get more jail time than a murderer. (Not that I think that this is a bad thing, but we are drawing paralells)

I think industry that produces the materials to "pirate" items need to be held accountable and not necessarily the consumer. Unless, the consumer is running a bootleg shop out of his/her garage. It makes no sense. These companies produce blank CDs/DVDs and the rest of the equipment to copy it and then the government decides to punish the consumer. It all started with that whiny group Metallica and people downloading their songs from Napster. Now, it is getting out of hand. One day, all these asswipes are going to end up in hell with a DVD burner shoved up their ass...if they believe in hell that is.