RE: Stallman Admits to Copyright Infringement

[Mike Bilow <mikebw@colossus.bilow.com>]

The US law was changed after the Lamacchia case.  See, for example:

	http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/LaMacchia/

(Note that Brian LaMacchia, who runs the PGP keyserver at pgp.ai.mit.edu,
and David LaMacchia, who was the defendant here, are brothers.)

David LaMacchia's personal page is:

	http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/~dml/home.html

LaMacchia's attorney, Harvey Silverglate, has some useful resources on his
web site:

	http://www.silverglategood.com/cases/lamacchia/

Harvey comments:

   Subsequent to and as a result of the outcome of the LaMacchia case,
   Congress amended the criminal copyright statute so that it currently
   punishes copyright infringement, whether or not the infringer seeks or
   obtains financial gain, so long as infringement causes more than
   $5,000 in damage to the copyright holder.

By the way, it is worth noting that Harvey is, in my opinion, one of the
nation's best and most committed civil liberties lawyers, and has written
extensively on many issues of importance:

	http://www.silverglategood.com/people/silverglate.html

-- Mike


On 2000-05-16 at 10:03 -0400, Andrew Weiss wrote:

> Doesn't the original FBI warning on videos and similar copyright protections
> cover only redistribution for profit?  Sure Metallica can point to lost
> sales, but unless somebody else is making a profit off of their work, or
> calling it their own, where is the illegality of it?  This may have changed
> a long time ago so I may be way off.