A new bill introduced a year ago - and nobody has heard of it being struck down - that appears to be similar to a previous year's bill to make copyright infringement more draconian, by criminalizing ATTEMPTS to copy (talk about unconstitutionally vague):
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-3155
and last year's bill:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h109-5921
Here is some of the nasty language from last year's bill:
"(A) ATTEMPT: Any person who attempts to commit an offense under
paragraph (1) shall be subject to the same penalties as those
prescribed for the offense, the commission of which was the
object of the attempt."
"(B) CONSPIRACY: If two or more persons conspire to commit an
offense under paragraph (1) and one or more of such persons
do any act to effectuate the object of the conspiracy, each
shall be subject to the same penalties as those prescribed
for the offense, the commission of which was the object of the
conspiracy."
So you can be arrested for attempting to copy part of the source code of a computer program, but it is not until you have served some time in jail and then waited many months for a judge to then tell you what part of the source code was copyrightable in the first place for your attempt to trigger criminal charges. And what's attempt? Or Conspire? If I write an article arguing nothing is copyrightable about source code, does that make me an automatic co-conspirator with anyone who reads my article? This is completely nuts, which in Washington DC translates to "Boy, some good chunks of money were collected for introducing that bill."
