DOJ to Go After Swappers

Declan McCullagh says Justice will prosecute “world’s largest copy machine”:

The U.S. Department of Justice is prepared to begin
prosecuting peer-to-peer pirates, a top government official said on Tuesday.
John Malcolm, a deputy assistant attorney general, said Americans should
realize that swapping illicit copies of music and movies is a criminal
offense that can result in lengthy prison terms.

“A lot of people think these activities are legal, and they think they ought
to be legal,” Malcolm told an audience at the Progress and Freedom
Foundation’s annual technology and politics summit.

Malcolm said the Internet has become “the world’s largest copy machine” and
that criminal prosecutions of copyright offenders are now necessary to
preserve the viability of America’s content industries. “There does have to
be some kind of a public message that stealing is stealing is stealing,”
said Malcolm, who oversees the arm of the Justice Department that prosecutes
copyright and computer crime cases.

In an interview, Malcolm would not say when prosecutions would begin. The
response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks temporarily diverted the
department’s resources and prevented its attorneys from focusing on this
earlier, he said….