| reply to Metatron2008
Re: When did 'personal rights' become 'right to steal'? The issue here is that this bill would give the DoJ the ability to shut down a site that they say promotes infringement. No court order required. That's the difference. To use your analogy, it'd be like a cop accusing you of shoplifting, immediately finding you guilty, and assessing and collecting a fine on the spot. This proposed bill would give someone the right to appeal the decision in court, but that places the burden on the accused to prove their innocence. To return to your analogy, you could appeal the decision the cop made, but the burden would be on you to do it, and the punishment has already been meted out, so the best you could do is get your fine back.
So, no, there is no constitutional right to steal, but there certainly is a right to due process, and there is a supposition that someone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, not merely declared guilty by some bureaucrat within the DoJ.
And think about this. The issue of whether the VCR was legal had to be settled by the Supreme Court. That means that the studios had to actually file suit and enter the court system in order to try to get the VCR outlawed. Now, think about the present time. Suppose you developed a product that you felt could revolutionize people's media centers. You developed it, built it, and sold it online. If this bill became law, the entertainment industry wouldn't have to sue you to get your site taken down. They'd just lobby someone at the DoJ to declare that your site is selling infringing tech, and down it would go. You could appeal in court, but now the burden is on you to prove that your new product doesn't infringe, not on the entertainment industry to prove that it does. |
