I fail to see how families enter into it.
We’re all familiar with the current administration’s contradictory naming policy (“Clean Air,” “Safe Forests,” “Saving Social Security”). I am pleased to announce that the administration has broken through to the next level. Not content with merely naming their bills to reflect the opposite of their intended effect, they have moved on to non sequiturs.
The Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, approved by the House of Representatives last Tuesday, represents the entertainment industry’s latest attempt to thwart rampant piracy on file-swapping networks. Movies such as “Star Wars: Episode II,” “Tomb Raider” and “The Hulk,” have been spotted online before their theatrical releases.
The law had drawn some controversy because it broadly says that anyone who has even one copy of an unreleased film, software program or music file in a shared folder could be subjected to prison terms and fines of up to three years. Penalties would apply regardless of whether that file was downloaded or not.
I’m a little bit curious as to where “Family Entertainment” enters into the equation whenever I hear the name of this bill. The copyright issue is clear – it’s yet another draconian anti-piracy bill composed to smack down online film pirates. We’re talking three years in prison for sharing a copy of Waterworld on a P2P network? Copyright infringement may be a serious problem, but I don’t know that internet pirates should wind up living through the first season of HBO’s Oz for it.
Still, I want to know – where is the “Family Entertainment” mentioned in the first half of the bill’s name?