Senator Feinstein, Senator Cornyn and Actress Bo Derek are working to stop the piracy of audio and video entertainment.

Washington, DC - U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced legislation today to crack down on video and audio piracy, which is having an increasingly damaging impact on the entertainment industry. The following is Senator Feinstein's statement:

"First, I want to thank Senator John Cornyn for his work on this issue, and for working with me on protecting the rights of all copyright owners to control their work. America's copyright industry is one of our most important economic engines; in fact, the creative process is so important that our Founding Fathers actually put copyright protection into the U.S. Constitution.

CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION:

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides that: "The Congress Shall have Power To...promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This clause, important enough to be included in the Constitution of the United States, indicates how important our Founding Fathers found copyright protection to be. In order to promote the progress of the arts and sciences; and this would include books, music, scientific inventions, medical discoveries, movies, computer software, and so on – Congress is granted the right to give exclusive control over those things, for limited time, to the those who create them. And this legislation we announce today simply helps give them those creators that protection.

The Bills Major Provisions

There are two main points:

• First, the bill makes it a federal crime to videotape movies in theaters without authorization. It may surprise you to know that only four states: New York, California, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin,and the District of Columbia have laws against walking into a movie theater and using a camcorder to record a movie. That leaves 46 other states with no laws against what is essentially the theft of property. Walking into a movie theater and surreptitiously videotaping a movie is clearly wrong, clearly inappropriate, and it is something that should clearly be illegal.
  
  
• Second, the bill makes it easier for prosecutors to convict individuals who put pre-released material on the Internet or for aggrieved parties to file lawsuits. This would include songs that have not yet been released to the public, movies still in theaters, software not yet in stores, and so on. The point is that there is no legitimate purpose for a person taking copyrighted material not legally available to the public in any form, and putting it on the Internet for free distribution without authorization. Current law requires that a prosecutor, or plaintiff in a civil suit, prove ten illegal downloads or $2,500 in damages. But this is difficult to prove, and often prevents charges from being brought. This legislation says that anyone who uploads pre-released, copyrighted material should clearly know that it might be downloaded ten, a hundred - even millions of times, for an incalculable cost. By removing the proof of damages requirement from the law, we make it easier to catch and punish those individuals who are stealing pre-released material and giving it to the public for free. These are simple issues, but I realize the solutions are not always simple. Some claim that people might accidentally make copyrighted music available on the Internet through peer-to-peer software, or that others may not realize that the

  Senator Feinstein, Jack Valenti president of the Motion Picture Association, Senator Cornyn, and Bo Derek watch a pirated version of a recently-released film.

  material they are sharing is copyrighted at all. As a result, it is sometimes hard to reach consensus on these issues, even though I think it is quite clear that most people who use peer-to-peer networks to distribute music, movies, or other material know that what they are doing is wrong, and that it is illegal. Either way, this bill should not be a hard sell. We only deal with two things - videotaping a movie, which everyone realizes is wrong, and distributing material that has not even been publicly released.So I again thank Senator Cornyn for his work, and I look forward to working with him to get this passed."