The U.S. Department of Justice wants YOU

Filed in archive Government on April 28, 2006

The EFF calls the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) latest power grab an outrage in The Season of Bad Laws, Part 2: Criminal Copyright Infringement, Drug War Style. It looks like another giveaway to Hollywood. The DOJ seeks extreme police power for copyright infringement, which today in most cases is still a civil offense.

From the article:

Keep in mind that criminal copyright infringement is no longer limited to situations involving commercial piracy. Thanks to laws like the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act and the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act (FECA), the feds can now bring criminal charges against people for simply uploading a single "pre-release" song (as two Ryan Adams fans discovered last month when they were brought up on federal charges for uploading tracks from pre-release promotional CDs).

Most of the changes sought by DoJ fall into two broad categories: (1) making it easier to convict people of criminal copyright infringement by eliminating the inconvenient necessity of proving that actual infringement took place; and (2) increasing the financial and penal penalties when someone is convicted.

This guarantees one result: more innocent people will be convicted. After all, if you're wrongly accused, but you know the feds don't have to prove their case and you're facing serious jail time, you're more likely to accept a plea bargain.

In fact, DoJ will have an easier time convicting you of criminal charges than civil litigants will have suing you for money. This is exactly backwards. Before they throw people in jail for copyright infringement (especially where the infringement does not involve a commercial motive), the feds should have to prove their case, just like copyright owners in civil cases. They should have to prove, among other things, that infringement took place, that it took place within the applicable statute of limitations, and that the work was properly registered.

Is it too much to ask that DoJ actually do its homework and prove its case before it imprisons people and seizes their assets for uploading a Ryan Adams song?