Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has proposed a new intellectual-property bill, the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which if enacted, would introduce a new crime for attempted copyright infringement. This act would criminalise those who attempt to commit piracy, even if no actual infringement has actually taken place. Violators will face between 1 and 10 years jail time, like those who have been caught carrying out copyright infringement. Those who use pirate software which poses health or safety dangers can face up to 20 years jail time. This extends to life imprisonment for those convicted for "knowingly or recklessly causes or attempts to cause death". An example here would be the use of unlicensed software on a life support machine.
To help catch those attempting to infringe copyright, more wiretaps will be allowed by law enforcement officers to carry out investigations. Property, including PCs that are intended to be used in any method to commit a copyright violation would be subject to being seized, including civil asset forfeiture. Forfeiture penalties would also be added to DMCA violations. To help the RIAA, Homeland Security would be required to alert the RIAA if one attempts to import CDs with "unauthorized fixations of the sounds, or sounds and images, of a live musical performance".
If this bill gets written into law, it is fairly clear that the entertainment industries will take full advantage of it. For example, those sharing out music would be subject to criminal prosecution even if no song was ever uploaded or even if the music industry was unable to obtain a sample from the offender. As the music industry already puts out fake versions of copyrighted songs, it would make it straight forward for the RIAA to sue those who just download music, since they can easily obtain the IP addresses of anyone attempting to obtain any of its fake song titles shared out, since they can consider each attempted download as intended copyright infringement.
Further information can be read in this c|net report and also on this Ars Technica report. Thanks to GristyMcFisty for letting us know about this news.
