Petteri Pyyny
10 Aug 2002 2:33
Nineteen U.S. congressmen have sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking him to go after online swappers who distribute copyrighted material in P2P networks. They also ask that these people should face jail time because of their actions.
According to the letter, dated 25th of July, Justice Department should devote more resources to police online copyrights, go after P2P networks and their users.
RIAA has already announced that it very pleased with the suggestion. No surprises there. An analyst for a digital civil-liberties group said the Justice Department probably had better things to do with its time.
The letter "implies that Justice should be going after relatively innocent behaviors that I suspect most Americans don't think warrant the time," said Alan Davidson, an associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology.