You gotta licence for that PC, Pal? You're gonna need one soon!

[elfs]

House Bill 4569, entered by the apalling James Sensenbrenner this season:

PROFESSIONAL DEVICE.-- (A) The term "professional device" means a device that is designed, manufactured, marketed, and intended for use by a person who regularly employs such a device for lawful business or industrial purposes, such as making, performing, displaying, distributing, or transmitting copies of audiovisual works on a commercial scale at the request of, or with the explicit permission of, the copyright owner.

(B) If a device is marketed to or is commonly purchased by persons other than those described in subparagraph (A), then such device shall not be considered to be a "professional device".

Every PC qualifies as capable of "transmitting copies of audiovisial works on a commercial scale."

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Paragraph B, if the advertising in the USA is anything like that I see here in the UK, would make a PC "marketed to". How many times does a Dell advert have to be shown on TV to count. Or IBM. Or the local computer hardware store? (In the UK we're getting a lot of PC World adverts in the run-up to Christmas.)

Settling this question has the prospect of making some lawyers rich, which I consider a primae facie indicator of a bad law.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

If only there were a way to make it a crime to commit such a bill without running into the custodes problem....

And then there's the weird-assed concept that you and I are both professionals, from a certain point of view...