Orwellian new Copyright Bill HR2391 would criminalize skipping commercials, destroy Fair Use

This bill is, of course, promoted by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It is being pushed through the Senate by their favorite Senator: Orrin Hatch from Utah. According to a wired News article, here are some of the things the bill would criminalize:

Anyone who uses the iTunes music sharing application could be charged with federal crimes and imprisoned. It would make it a criminal offense to skip television commercials -- because, of course, the broadcast networks want to force consumers to watch all advertisements by criminalizing people who skip ads. People who bring video cameras into movie theaters could wind up spending three years in prison for federal crimes. The bill would even allow the Justice Department to file civil copyright lawsuits on behalf of the recording industry, meaning that you can have the Justice Department at your door for something as simple as copying a few MP3 files for a friend.

Fair Use would also be destroyed. Artists wouldn't be able to use images of President Bush's face in funny flash animations, for example. Publishers would not be able to use a company logo in an article that makes fun of that company. And individuals would be denied the right to quote passages from articles, books, or magazines that deserve public comment. All such uses would be considered criminal and could earn you federal prosecution.

If this Senate bill passes, it will transform virtually every young American into a criminal, and at that point it will be up to the music industry and recording industry to decide who they want to imprisoned today. With every person defined as a criminal, it all comes down to "selective prosecution," where the industry targets anyone they want, because everybody is now technically a criminal.

These laws should never exist in a free society. These are the laws of a police state... one that seems to be ever more quickly creeping up on Americans in the post-9/11 era.

• WASHINGTON -- Several lobbying camps from different industries and ideologies are joining forces to fight an overhaul of copyright law, which they say would radically shift in favor of Hollywood and the record companies and which Congress might try to push through during a lame-duck session that begins this week.
• The Senate might vote on HR2391, the Intellectual Property Protection Act, a comprehensive bill that opponents charge could make many users of peer-to-peer networks, digital-music players and other products criminally liable for copyright infringement.
• The bill lumps together several pending copyright bills including HR4077, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act, which would criminally punish a person who "infringes a copyright by ...
• Critics charge the vague language could apply to a person who uses the popular Apple iTunes music-sharing application.
• The bill would also permit people to use technology to skip objectionable content -- like a gory or sexually explicit scene -- in films, a right that consumers already have.
• However, under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited.
• The proposed law also includes language from the Pirate Act (S2237), which would permit the Justice Department to file civil lawsuits against alleged copyright infringers.
• Also under the proposed law, people who bring a video camera into a movie theater to make a copy of the film for distribution would be imprisoned for three years, fined or both.
• The groups that lined up against the bill include the Consumer Electronics Association, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, the American Conservative Union and public-interest advocacy group Public Knowledge, which hosted a press briefing on Friday as the opening salvo of its campaign to stop passage.