A California state senator wants to throw peer-to-peer developers who don't "exercise reasonable care" to stop copyright infringement – or transmission of what the bill's language calls "obscene matter depicting a minor under 18 years of age" – into jail for up to a year, by way of a bill he introduced last week.
California law now imposes fines up to $2,500 and county jail time up to a year for residents who send copyrighted music or movies to more than 10 others without disclosing e-mail addresses and the title of the works in question. The new bill by state Sen. Kevin Murray (D-Los Angeles), who also wrote the previous law, would do likewise to peer-to-peer network developers and operators.
Mike Weiss, the chief executive of peer-to-peer network Morpheus parent StreamCast, accused Murray of failing to find the facts before bringing up a misguided bill which Weiss said would "effectively make criminals out of many companies that bring jobs and economic growth to California. This bill," the Weiss statement continued, "is an attack on innovation itself and taxpaying California-based businesses like StreamCast depend on that freedom to innovate."
Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P trade site P2P United was unavailable for comment when reached by AVNOnline.com January 19.
"If this bill passes, I want to know if we can start attaching the same types of laws to gun and alcohol manufacturers," wrote Josh Paul, a WebObjects programmer and television producer, on openp2p.com. "P2P may hurt some companies financially, but guns and alcohol bring real pain and suffering to real people. I have yet to hear about someone being killed by a P2P user who lost control."
Murray, for his part, doesn't quite see his bill in such grave terms. In fact, he says he's not exactly looking to punish so much as to encourage the P2P networks to continue their previously expressed interest in better filtering.
"To the extent that they agree that they can filter, we think it's reasonable to require filters for peer-to-peer activity," he told reporters. "We're only asking for reasonable controls. We're not asking for people to create new technology or recreate the wheel."
This came while the P2P world awaits the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on file-swapping's legal status, expected before the current term expires, following two federal courts' having previously ruled that at least two P2P companies – Morpheus and Grokster – were not directly liable for infringement committed by their users, in large part because neither of those networks maintain central servers or databases that contain the materials in question.
But while awaiting that ruling, word came this week that French Court ruled in October that the French music industry had no claim upon cutting the Internet service of P2P users. The Société Civile des Producteurs Phonographiques – the French equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America – had asked the AFA-France to cut 20 P2Pers off the Internet in December 2003, based on a recently-enacted French law allowing courts to suspend "obviously" illegal content.
The SCPP sought to use so-called "special urgency" procedures under French court rules, so they wouldn't have to face the targeted users. The court ruled the SCPP had not shown sufficient reason why it shouldn't face the users they accused.
