The United States intellectual property policy is so far out of whack to be almost laughable, unless of course you were sentenced to jail for downloading a song – not funny at all then. Sound far fetched? It’s not, that’s what S.B. 3021 was all about – and it was passed by the U.S. Senate on November 20, 2004.

Luckily procedural problems that kept it from becoming law, but you can bet it will be back – and then even first time offenders can be sent of to prison with murderers and rapist for 5 years!

Does anyone one except big media and politicians influenced by big media think that downloading a file from the Internet is as serious a crime as rape? Of course not, but the United States Senate passed a bill that would make those two crimes equal in terms of prison sentences.

Okay, so you don’t download music from peer to peer networks and think that artists should get money for their music. So do we, so do most people. In fact the RIAA/MPAA use various strawman arguments to try and make anyone that is for sensible IP policy look like a thieving pinko maniac – when the fact is that they are the ones that have the extremists views on this issue.

How about this – you buy a DVD and want to let your kids use it, but want to make a backup of it in case they scratch it. The software is available to back it up, hardware too, and if you read the fair use provisions of our current laws you are well within you rights to do so. But guess what – if you make that copy, of a DVD that you legally purchased, you are a criminal in the eyes of these big media moguls and their lobbyist.

How about if you use your legal Tivo to skip commercials? According to former Turner Broadcasting CEO Jamie Kellner, “Because of the ad skips…. It’s theft” and you are a criminal.

If you are a long time reader of OMB you know that we are not in favor of wholesale file swapping, have never endorsed a P2P app, and only feature free, legal downloads on the site. We love music and want artists to get paid for it.

But this is not about music. It’s about big media producers trying to maintain their monopoly on the content distribution industries and to continue producing mostly crappy music and movies while screwing ( all but the biggest ) artists that actually create the content that we all love.

Throughout history business haved tried to stifle new technologies – from the indroduction of player pianos to terrestrial radio to VCR’s – the content companies claimed each time that these technological advanced would put them out of business and “ruin music”. Of course we all know that in each case the opposite happened. Radio feeds CD and concert ticket sales. VCR’s launched a revolution in legal home video viewing making the movie companies more money then their “theatrical” releases.

So while are not advocating “stealing” content, we do think that you should download all of the free, legal music you can get your hands on – as well as standing up for your fair use rights.

Click on over to Jailed for a Song and then to IPac and do what you can to make sure that this country returns to some semblance of a sensible intellectual property policy. Join us in trying to help ensure that our fair use rights are protected and that the U.S. is not left out of the next era of technological advances just to please the current monopolizers of content distribution and their cronies in Washington.