On June 25th, the senate passed the Pirate Act, a bill that would make videotaping a film in a movie theater punishable by three years in prison (no joke!). There is a similar bill in the House that was recently passed out of subcommittee, and is presumably making its way towards a vote. This is one of the most egregious attacks on fair use since the DMCA ... er, I mean the Patriot Act ... no, wait, COPA, no, maybe it's ... look, it's just really, really bad, and it must be stopped.

Is there something you think I missed this week or something I should be covering? Leave a comment below or send me an E-mail at Jeff@malgenic.org. Thanks for all the feedback I've been getting lately!

COPA is a law that sets legal penalties for distributing harmful materials to minors commercially. This of course sounds all well and good, until you start to think about what "harmful" materials could mean in the eyes of the government. A good history of the law and the litigation behind it can be found here.

Michael Moore Pisses Lots of People Off
For some fun irony, read the BBC report that Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 -- a classic anti-censorship novel -- is upset and may even possibly sue Michael Moore over the title of Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11. According to the BBC article, Bradbury "would rather avoid litigation" and is "hoping to settle this as two gentlemen, if he'll shake hands with me and give me back my book and title." His title? I'm pretty sure that Ray Bradbury does not own the word Fahrenheit, nor do I think that anyone could possibly confuse the two works. Perhaps Bradbury, once he's done getting "his" book title back, should go give "Something Wicked This Way Comes" back to Shakespeare.

In further Fahrenheit 9/11 news, Michael Moore has announced that he likes the idea of his movie being distributed over peer-to-peer services, and won't go after anyone distributing it. Lions Gate Films, the distributor of Fahrenheit 9/11 has announced that they'll go ahead with what Moore says. Interestingly, the only person who seems to be upset about this is Jack Valenti, who said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald: "I don't think there's really a single actor or director in the world who does not believe that if you don't combat piracy, it will devour you in the future." Yes, Jack, you're right as always, just like when you said that the VCR was like the Boston Strangler to the movie industry.

Beastie DRM Redux
In a follow up to a story from a few weeks ago, the Beastie Boys have responded to the allegations that their new CD contains spyware/malware/copy-protection, by saying, it, uh, doesn't. Here's the quote:
"While the Beastie Boys CD does use copy control in some territories," said a Beastie Boys rep, "there is no copy control on the Beasties Boys discs in the US or the UK. Where copy protection is used, it is Macrovision's CDS-200 technology -- the same technology being used for the past several months around the world for all of EMI's releases in those territories. This Macrovision technology does NOT install spyware or vaporware of any kind on a user's PC. In fact, CDS-200 does not install software applications of ANY KIND on a user's PC. All the copy protection in CDS-200 is hardware based, meaning that it is dependent on the physical properties and the format of the CD."

Vaporware? Anyway, I quickly went and checked to see what Marcovision CDS-200 was all about. Here is the page for it, but I'll give you a quick rundown of the features they tout: