There's a new bill floating around in Congress, which would make uploading even ONE file over a P2P network a federal felony... get this... punishable by FIVE YEARS in jail, and a $250,000 dollar fine.
NO! IT does NOT! Did you _read_ the bill?
It refers specifically to COPYRIGHTED material. It does not make file sharing networks illegal. Distributing copyrighted material without the authors permission is already illegal - this simply makes it an offense to _offer_ the material for public download via a computer network. The way it is worded, it would also apply to putting copyrighted material on a webserver...already widely recognized to be illegal.
Incidentally, the bill also makes it illegal to register a domain name with false identity information. IMO, that's a good thing.
Chris
********************************* Chris Merrill [EMAIL PROTECTED] *********************************
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