Decius wrote:

Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life. During a conference call, Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.

This is just bizarre!

See this gets my goat. Violent crime = jail. Non-violent crime = fine and/or term jail time.

Currently judges are handing down embarrassing sentences to people who shoplift, blast loud rap music from cars, and so on....

We dont have the space for these people to spend our tax dollars on jailing no violent people. Seems like someone is creating more of a problem before they fix another one...

IMHO...

Decius wrote:

Anyone using counterfeit products who "recklessly causes or attempts to cause death" can be imprisoned for life. During a conference call, Justice Department officials gave the example of a hospital using pirated software instead of paying for it.

This is just bizarre!

If by bizarre you mean outrageous, then yes, I agree.

The headline has a heavy dose of hyperbole, of course, since that life imprisonment is linked to someone causing a death, while using pirated software. That one is more stupid than outrageous since I don't think there's a useful connection.

The other stated amendements are just plain shenanigans. Attempted crime is not the same as committing a crime in all cases, whatever Gonzales says. I'm not saying it's nothing either, but it ain't the same. As for intent to commit a crime, well, seriously, that's just insane.

Some of these punishments are well out of line with reality. It's corporate pandering and transparently so. These assholes aren't even trying to hide it anymore.

skullaria wrote:
I bet at least 1/3 of the computing population has copied something illegally at one time or another. The rest of the them probably can't produce serial numbers for everything they have installed.

Agreed, probably more than 1/2 on home computers (since businesses get audited). 1/2 the comps in this house have pirated stuff. My dad's laptop (because it's all open source software) and my dad's laptop (because his office won't allow it) are the 1/2 that lack pirated stuff.

My cousin (owns a little company) said she "had to buy MS Office because we get audited," which well...she didn't get it when I said "audited only matters on free stuff for *illegal* *pirated* free stuff. If it's legally freely given away, auditing doesn't mean crap and you can use NeoOffice just fine!" I think when I suggested Linux+OOo+Gimp on cheap hardware (to save over Mac+MS Office+Photoshop...she didn't want Windows cuz of viruses) she thought I was suggesting pirating.