# Congress moving to criminalize P2P

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2004-03-27T11:54:09Z


Xeni of Boing Boing writes in Wired News about Congress moving to criminalize P2P.XeniRead the full text of Senator Hatch's remarks describing children as "human shields against copyright owners and law enforcement agencies," and the "piracy machine designed to tempt them to engage in copyright piracy or pornography distribution," here. Human shields my ass. These kids are customers who are being treated like criminals. I know this is dead horse kicking, but I've learned about and subsequently purchased more music online since I started sharing music files. As a DJ, when I made mixed tapes, I was promoting these bands to people who didn't know about them. Music sharing is a natural and essential method of promoting new artists. It's a small number of very famous artists who feel gypped by how easy it is to copy music. For must artists, the ability to copy and share music should be as important as promoting their music on the radio and through DJs.
I personally think that Creative Commons can solve a lot of these problems by allowing artists to select what type of copyright they would like for their music and allow P2P services to mark content with the proper copyright notice. Remember that even though Jack Valenti endorsed Creative Commons, at an operational basis, we (Creative Commons) have received resistance from the legal departments of the record companies when their artists have tried to choose Creative Commons licenses.





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#### Categories

Creative Commons, Music, US Policy and Politics