From: "N Wolcott" <nwolcott@dsdial.net>
What is the impactof the new copyright passed by the house yesterday on the likes of PG, Ockerbloom, and other sites, not to mention the minions. ???
Since you were'nt more specific, I had to hit the web to try to figure out which law you were talking about. The only thing I could find that seemed to fit the bill was this: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5677232.html In a nutshell, it allows prison terms of up to three years for possessing even a single copy of a work that hasn't been commercially released, regardless of whether it has been shared. It has not a jot of impact on PG, unless we're planning on putting prerelease copyrighted works on the site, and I missed that discussion. This isn't a "copyright law" in the sense of changing copyright standards in any way, it just increases the penalty for what was already a violation. Since PG is extremely conscientious about copyright, this doesn't matter to our work (it may or may not matter to individuals.) It does show a general attitude of clampdown, but I think we were all already well aware of that pervasive attitude in virtually all governmental bodies these days. Dave Doty