Upload a File, Go to Prison 
By Katie Dean

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,59654,00.html
02:00 AM Jul. 17, 2003

PT A new bill proposed in Congress on Wednesday would land a person in
prison for five years and impose a fine of $250,000 for uploading a
single file to a peer-to-peer network. The bill was introduced by Reps.
John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.). They said the
bill is designed to increase domestic and international enforcement of
copyright laws.

More specifically, the bill targets peer-to-peer file trading, an aide
working for the congressmen said. The law is meant to keep up with
changing technology. Content like movies, music and software are the
country's No. 1 export, but the creators are being hurt by people who
use technology to get the content for free, Conyers said. Jason
Schultz, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation
<http://www.eff.org/>, called the bill "a sign of desperation" by the
recording industry and Hollywood as they try to hold on to their
business models.

The bill, called the Author, Consumer and Computer Owner Protection and
Security Act of 2003, or ACCOPS, would allocate more money to the
justice department to investigate copyright crimes: up to $15 million a
year, compared with the current budget of $10 million. The bill would
also enable information sharing between countries to help in copyright
enforcement abroad. The bill "clarifies" that uploading a single file
of copyright content qualifies as a felony. Penalties for such an
offense include up to five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.

In addition, filming a movie in a theater without authorization would
immediately qualify as a federal offense. "We're giving notice that
this is something we want specific attention paid to," said the aide.
"The current law is very general." ACCOPS also mandates that
file-sharing websites must get consent from consumers to search their
computers for content or to store files. In addition, those who provide
false information when registering a domain name could also be charged
with a federal offense.

Last year, Rep. Berman introduced a bill that would protect copyright
holders from liability if they impaired or disrupted the unauthorized
distribution of their content on P2P networks. The bill is still being
debated. EFF's Schultz said ACCOPS shows that the recording and movie
industries "don't care what kinds of collateral damage they create."
Sufficient laws are in place to punish those who violate copyright law,
he said.

Plus, the poorly written bill sets up an unnecessarily wide dragnet,
Schultz said. It criminalizes the placement of any copyright work on a
computer network. "If you have a file stored on your computer and your
computer is connected to a publicly available network, you may not even
know that you are committing a felony, but this law could put you in
jail," he said. "There have been hearings, year in and year out, and
consumers have not complained about anything that is going on in this
bill," Schultz said. "The only people complaining are the content
industry folks.

"The content industry is asking the public to fund this kind of an
effort against themselves."

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