How many laws are needed for happiness?

Over the past 30 years, the United States adopted 15 "anti-piracy" laws that either extended the duration of copyright, or toughened the sentence for "pirates", or covered new ways of illegally copying content. As recent attempts to promote SOPA / PIPA show, the claims of copyright holders are still far from satisfying, and they will continue.

1. 1982. Piracy and Counterfeiting Amendments Act : increasing the maximum criminal liability for illegal copying of records, cassettes, and films from $ 25,000 and 2 years in prison to $ 250,000 and 5 years in prison. It is also legalized that for the first time a convicted citizen can receive a maximum term.
2. 1984. Record Rental Amendment of 1984 : music rental is outlawed (therefore, in America there are no music services similar to video rental).
3. 1990. Copyright Remedy Clarification Act : copyright holders have the opportunity to sue individual states (previously they could declare sovereign immunity).
4. 1990. Computer Software Rental Amendments Act : Outlawed rental software.
5. 1992. Audio Home Recording Act : licensing fees for each sold digital audio recorder (digital voice recorders, etc.) are introduced.
6. 1994. Uruguay Round Agreements Act : Records of public concerts are not only removed from the public domain and copyrighted, but criminal liability has been introduced for the recording and recording of concerts (audio or video).
7. 1995. The Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act : Introduces a new “digital performance” right in the list of copyright and related rights owned by the copyright holder.
8. 1996. Anticounterfeiting Consumer Protection Act of 1996 : Criminal liability for the production and marketing of counterfeit copyright, software, documentation and packaging, as well as films and music. The government also received the right to confiscate property related to criminal activity (the forerunner of confiscation of domains).
9. 1997. No Electronic Theft (NET) Act : lowering the bar for qualifying a criminal offense (for example, removed the condition for a criminal to receive commercial benefits).
10. 1998. Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act : 20-year extension of copyright. It used to be 50 years since the death of the author, or 75 years for corporate property, it became 70 and 95 years, respectively. For works created before 1978, the deadline is 95 years.
11. 1998. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) : A well-known law that describes numerous mechanisms to combat the piracy of digital materials, including introducing the procedure for removing content from a site out of court after notification of the site owner.
12. 1999. Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 : Substantial increase in compensation for copyright infringement.
13. 2004. Intellectual Property Protection and Courts Amendments Act : fines (administrative and criminal) for counterfeiting labels, documentation and packaging (separately from content) were set, the bar for qualifying a crime as intentional was lowered.
14. 2005. Family Entertainment and Copyright Act : The criminal liability for filming movies in movie theaters also gives movie theater employees the power to detain people suspected of making a movie. Criminal liability for publishing work online before the official release.
15. 2008. Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act : Stricter Administrative Responsibility for Violations. Extension of law enforcement authorities to confiscate property (under this law, domains are now confiscated from site owners who are suspected of copyright infringement). Creation of a separate post in the White House to improve the fight against piracy.

Now we are told that the Internet is a wild, lawless territory. The rightholders again panic and convince everyone that the adoption of new legislation is “absolutely necessary” - they said the same thing every time, promoting a new and new expansion of the package of anti-piracy laws.