Scripting News: Life in prison for copyright infringement?

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Life in prison for copyright infringement?

News.com: "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including 'attempts' to commit piracy."

Theory -- this is what the Democrats got to look the other way and let the Gonzales matter drop. Howard Berman, the advocate for the RIAA and MPAA, is on the House Judiciary Committee, and in general, the Democrats are the ones pushing for legislation on behalf of the entertainment industry.

Also, I have no idea what attempted infringement means, but it could mean visiting a site that has BitTorrents available for download.

The News.com article isn't clear about this, but apparently there are some infringements deemed so serious that the proposed penalty is life in prison.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:00:47 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Apr Jun