The Important Work Of The Justice Department

Drudge is reporting that the Justice Department apparently does not have enough work on its hands working to protect the nation from terrorism or working to protect the economy from future Enrons, and is preparing to target individuals who share files via p2p services for prosecution:

In an interview, Malcolm would not say when prosecutions would begin. The response to the 11 September terrorist attacks temporarily diverted the department's resources and prevented its attorneys from focusing on this earlier, he said.

A few weeks ago, some of the most senior members of Congress pressured the Justice Department to invoke a little-known law, the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act, against peer-to-peer users who swap files without permission.

Under the NET Act, signed by President Clinton in 1997, it is a federal crime to share copies of copyrighted products such as software, movies or music with anyone, even friends or family members, if the value of the work exceeds $1,000 (about �640). Violations are punishable by one year in prison, or if the value tops $2,500, "not more than five years" in prison.

I "share" an occasional file, and have used p2p services to preview music. And because of the crappy sound of lossy-compressed files, I almost always wind up purchasing a CD of music I actually want to listen to again. And in many cases, I'm buying CDs on little-known labels from Americana artists like The Groobees or Cross Canadian Ragweed or Brent Mitchell whose stuff isn't spread all across p2p services, and will never attract the attention of the idiots at the Big 5 media companies. Maybe I'm rare, but I'm not hurting the big media companies who would like to shut down my use of p2p; their own myopia is.

So how, pray tell, are John Ashcroft and John Malcolm going to distinguish between the occasional file I swap (often of music on a cassette or scratched CD sitting around the house) and the "criminals" who are swapping files whose value is greater than $1,000, which is the trigger point for this law? How will they "prove" such a thing? What intrusive means will they use to collect their evidence? And how many nuisance prosecutions will take place?

To rephrase that last question, I should ask -- how many nuisance prosecutions will take place before they figure out that 1) there really is no non-intrusive, reliable way to collect the sort of evidence they need to deter this behavior, and 2) the Feds will request from Congress more power to act in this area?

Sometimes I think privacy-rights and civil-liberties advocates go a little overboard. But this is one instance where I share their concerns.

(07-22-02 Update) The RIAA has gone to court to force Verizon Internet Services to turn over information on one of its subscribers, whom the RIAA suspects of sharing files. Verizon, to its credit, refused to comply with the original subpoena, which the federal court issued, and pledges to fight the intrusion. I expect more stories like this, and I don't like it a bit.

[Posted at 21:01 CST on 08/21/02] [Link]