Audio Interview: File Sharing? The Justice Department Says That They Want to Know Who You Are   11/30/2004 - 1,547 views, 1 Comment

And indeed that is just what they offer.

Of particular interest was the November 18th interview with David Israelite, Chairman of the Task Force on Intellectual Property, for the U.S. Justice Department. The Justice Department’s John Ashcroft had announced in October that “peer-to-peer piracy is a “widespread” problem that can be addressed only through more spending, more FBI agents and more power for prosecutors”, and that “the department is prepared to build the strongest, most aggressive legal assault against intellectual-property crime in our nation’s history.”

During the interview, Israelite explains that it would be helpful for Justice to have a way to determine with certainty the identities of peer-to-peer users who are duplicating copyrighted files without permission on the Internet. In otherwords, a way to end-run the recent court decisions stating that one can not just demand that an ISP divulge the identity of a file-sharing user willy-nilly.

At another point in the interview, he compares copyright infringement to tangible property theft, and suggests that because local law enforcement can’t police the Internet as they do their own municipalities, it is necessary for the FBI to police the Internet in much the same way as your city’s finest does their local beat.

Of course, your local police officers must have probable cause, and seeing someone walking with a crowbar, when they are otherwise doing nothing wrong, ain’t it.

Inside Digital Media’s website is at http://www.insidedigitalmedia.com.
You can download the MP3 file of the interviewhere, or listen to a Real Audio stream here.

For more background information on this issue in general, you can read this article at CNet News.