Congress Pushes Law to Declare Copyright Infringement Punishable by Beheading

Joe McCarthy- shit, sorry, Patrick Leahy (D-VT) want to behead you for copyright infringement on behalf of the MPAA. Photo courtesy of The Vermont Independent

The congressional judiciary committee, acting in conjunction with the MPAA and RIAA, has introduced a new bill requiring a minimum death sentence for those who infringe on copyright. The bill (S. 3804), introduced by Senator Joe McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), will create two separate blacklists for copyright offenders and introduce sentencing guidelines for those who host illegal copyright material. The merits of the second blacklist, which is controversial due to its mandate for the decapitation of those who host websites that are “dedicated to infringing activity,” are being hotly debated online.

“I don’t understand why people are so up in arms about this,” explained Jack Valenti, former head of the MPAA, who we caught up with in his posh apartment in hell. “Seriously, the second list wouldn’t even require decapitation. Lethal injection, yeah- even the gas chamber, but it’s all stuff that we regularly do to people for murder.” This first blacklist, which will be created by the Department of Justice with help from the MPAA and RIAA, is less controversial, although it would not require judicial oversight. McCarthy chimed in: “Yeah, the really bad one- the decapitation- that’s only for the worst offenders. The court has to declare you guilty in order for you to get decapitated. Really, people are getting upset over nothing.”

The bill, entitled “The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeiting Act,” has met with some opposition in online circles, but we have decided that as copyright holders of material that is printed online we have no interest in talking to them.

“The way it works is that when the court declares you one of the worst copyright-terrorists- you know, a repeat offender, someone who distributes this kind of material to children- and we have in good faith that a lot of these people are in league with the drug cartels down in Mexico- we cut your head off with a guillotine and we put it on a pike outside of the MPAA’s headquarters in Washington, DC. And honestly- this isn’t everybody. We’ve put provisions in for one time offenders who we think have learned their lessons- those guys get their hands cut off, you know, kind of like how they do it with Sharia in Saudi Arabia or whatever,” noted McCarthy. Provisions of the bill also provide for those who leak sensitive government documents (and videos of, say, the US army's murder of civilians) to be sent to reeducation camps, and for counterfeiters to be hung in public squares.