Congress, Your Best Friend

The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act has been passed by the House and Senate, and they're just waiting for the President to sign it into law. Isn't that great?

Making a movie available electronically prior to its release can now result in a three year sentence...

This, from The Register's article on the subject. Please note that their title is accurate; this gives p2p filesharing of a movie prior to its theatrical release date the same legal penalties and degree of severity of manslaughter; I dunno, to me KILLING SOMEONE seems a little worse than watching a movie a few days early.
Not surprisingly, this bill is yet another sponsored on the floor by our favorite Senator of all, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah. What a great guy. He's sponsored endless legislation to prevent anybody anywhere from doing anything online, driven hard not only to criminalize filesharing, but to equate it with murder, as per today's main article, and... oh, hell. Here's his voting record. Look for yourself. Oh, and here's his financial records, too.
In other news, it's not just our government that's stupid. I'd say "Thank God," except it's not something you'd actually WANT.
The thing about government is, they do things you'd think you'd want, except they use those things to hide the things they do that you don't want at all. For example: The Family Movie Act. See, the trick here is that this bill, which seems on the surface to be useful, is in fact camouflaging yet another attack on filesharing. Here, the tactic is to declare filesharers to be bootleggers - and get this - subject to an ADDITIONAL set of penalties because the versions of movies distributed via filesharing are "unauthorized in content and / or quality."
Mmmmhmmmm. It's not just MUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRDEERRRRRRRRR, it's also bad copies. Amazing.

Oh, and while I'm at it, did you know that using your DVD player or VCR's "Fast Forward" feature to avoid commercials might soon be illegal? Yep, That's right, the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2004 would make it illegal to avoid commercial content by fast forwarding. Enforcement will cost the government (they claim) $17 million, although I'm not sure, short of requiring manufacturers not to install the feature, how you'd prevent it, or even know who did it.
The very idea is, to me utterly incredible: that media companies have the right to FORCE you to watch advertising. I remember the First Amendment saying that you have the right to say anything you want, but oddly enough I don't remember it saying anything about other people being required to pay attention to you while you do it. The real issue here is that the movie companies feel like they're losing money - not because they're irritating the crap out of you, oh no, it's because you're not watching the ads - and thus, because GOD FORBID they should change their business to meet the new market, they will force you by law to conform to their way of doing business.
What utter claptrap.