U.S. Senate Passes Scaled-Back Copyright Measure
| Title: | U.S. Senate Passes Scaled-Back Copyright Measure (ID: CSD3530) | | Author(s): | Andy Sullivan | | Topics: | Copyright, Copyright Infringement, Federal Copyright Law, P2P File Sharing, Piracy | | Origin: | Community Contributions (2004) | | Type: | Articles, Papers, and Reports | | Abstract: | A bill passed by the U.S. Senate expands certain protections for copyrighted material but excludes proposed language that would have made file trading on P2P networks a criminal offense. Under the bill, which is similar to one already passed by the House of Representatives, those found guilty of videotaping movies in theaters face up to three years in prison. In addition, people who put copyrighted movies, music, or other content online prior to its official release will also face harsher penalties. The House and Senate versions of the bill must be reconciled before it can be signed into law. Last month the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a measure under which those found to have shared more than one thousand songs on a P2P network could face three years in prison, but that measure was stripped from the Senate bill after strong opposition from groups that said such a measure would represent an unreasonable expansion of copyright law. The Senate bill also did not include language that would have made it illegal to remove certain parts of copyrighted works. Representatives from the movie industry had argued that services that edit copyrighted movies to make them appropriate for younger viewers violate the movie studios' copyrights, but the Senate did not approve that measure. | | View this resource: | |
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