Pirate Act & Copynorms

CNET has a story entitled 'Pirate Act' raises civil rights concerns. Here is a taste:

File swappers concerned about getting in trouble with record labels over illegal downloads may soon have a major new worry: the U.S. Department of Justice.

A proposal that the Senate may vote on as early as next week would let federal prosecutors file civil lawsuits against suspected copyright infringers, with fines reaching tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The so-called Pirate Act is raising alarms among copyright lawyers and lobbyists for peer-to-peer firms, who have been eyeing the recording industry's lawsuits against thousands of peer-to-peer users with trepidation. The Justice Department, they say, could be far more ambitious.

What is behind the new statute? The story continues:

not one peer-to-peer criminal prosecution has taken place in the United States. The Justice Department has indicated that it won't target peer-to-peer networks for two reasons: Imprisoning file-swapping teens on felony charges isn't the department's top priority, and it's always difficult to make criminal charges stick.

The priorities explanation may be part of the reason, but there is obvisouly another. Criminal prosecutions for P2P would cause a storm of outrage, because use of P2P simply does not violate the copynorms--the informal social attitudes that determine the social acceptability of copying behavior.