BitTorrent Goes Mainstream

[KevinG]

Here's another related one.

Senators want Justice Department to sue P2P pirates.

American peer-to-peer users worried about being sued into oblivion by the recording industry may soon have a much bigger concern: facing off against the U.S. Department of Justice. Two senators, a Democrat and a Republican, introduced a bill on Wednesday that would unleash the world's largest law firm on Internet pirates. It would authorize the Justice Department to file civil lawsuits against people engaged in peer-to-peer copyright infringement--with the proceeds going to the company or person who owns the copyright. "This legislation is a simple bill that would give the Department of Justice the authority to prosecute copyright violations as civil wrongs," Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said during a hearing on Wednesday. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, is a co-sponsor. This is not the first time this bill, called the Pirate Act, has surfaced in Washington. Despite criticisms from civil liberties groups and complaints from peer-to-peer companies that it amounted to corporate welfare for copyright holders, the Pirate Act has cleared the Senate three times. (Here's our coverage after the June 2004 vote.)

http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9813358-38.html