Re: Clinton signs draconian antipiracy law, from the Netly News

[Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>]

At 12:37 -0500 12/17/97, Ray Arachelian wrote:
>You have a CD player at home and use a walkwan when walking around, so you
>tape your CD's so you can listen to them. Wham! Instant jail time.

Yes, if you copy $1,000 worth of CDs within six months.

>Where does Fair Use fall into this?  Do you have the actual wording of
>this law?  So if some dork publisher decides that you can't download their
>shareware/freeware after the fact because he doesn't like you, he can say
>it wasn't approved?

You might want to read the rest of my article. I also link to the text of
the law. I suspect that your "dork publisher" example is not exactly
covered since the infringment has to be "willful." That is, you have to
KNOW that what you're doing is INDEED an infringment in order to be
convicted.

That does not mean it is a good law, of course. A better example might be
knowingly posting a copyrighted article (let's say, worth $1) to Usenet. As
soon as it's distributed around Usenet's thousands of NNTP servers --
Bingo! -- you're a federal felon.

The Scientologists, I predict, will love this law.

-Declan