Posted on 06/17/2003 2:54:06 PM PDT by Jean S
WASHINGTON (AP) - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.
The surprise remarks by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, during a hearing on copyright abuses represent a dramatic escalation in the frustrating battle by industry executives and lawmakers in Washington against illegal music downloads.
During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws.
"No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer," replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can't.
"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."
The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."
"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.
"There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch said.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who has been active in copyright debates in Washington, urged Hatch to reconsider. Boucher described Hatch's role as chairman of the Judiciary Committee as "a very important position, so when Senator Hatch indicates his views with regard to a particular subject, we all take those views very seriously."
Some legal experts suggested Hatch's provocative remarks were more likely intended to compel technology and music executives to work faster toward ways to protect copyrights online than to signal forthcoming legislation.
"It's just the frustration of those who are looking at enforcing laws that are proving very hard to enforce," said Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department cybercrimes prosecutor and associate professor at George Washington University law school.
The entertainment industry has gradually escalated its fight against Internet file-traders, targeting the most egregious pirates with civil lawsuits. The Recording Industry Association of America recently won a federal court decision making it significantly easier to identify and track consumers - even those hiding behind aliases - using popular Internet file-sharing software.
Kerr predicted it was "extremely unlikely" for Congress to approve a hacking exemption for copyright owners, partly because of risks of collateral damage when innocent users might be wrongly targeted.
"It wouldn't work," Kerr said. "There's no way of limiting the damage."
Last year, Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ignited a firestorm across the Internet over a proposal to give the entertainment industry new powers to disrupt downloads of pirated music and movies. It would have lifted civil and criminal penalties against entertainment companies for disabling, diverting or blocking the trading of pirated songs and movies on the Internet.
But Berman, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary panel on the Internet and intellectual property, always has maintained that his proposal wouldn't permit hacker-style attacks by the industry on Internet users.
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On the Net: Sen. Hatch: http://hatch.senate.gov
AP-ES-06-17-03 1716EDT
I wish I would have worded it as well as you did, however..
If Sony Records wants to destroy your computer, how can they do it if you are downloading their property from a third-party "host" server? The owner of the "host" server would have to be an accomplice in anything that Sony does to your home computer.
Just sneek it in a bill, they won't know it because they never read even their own Bills
Or even listen to.
What more do they want?
It would appear that he is -- as long as he continues to show up in church on most Sundays. That said, I'd vote for the Rev. Moon over him if I lived in Utah.....
If it happens to me, it will be a labor of love to destroy the persons who did it. I would have the resources of the company attorneys to defend the losses incurred by my customers. The last time the attorneys called for help, I provided them a 284 page deposition. A little quid pro quo would be nice.
I had a hard disk crash on a QNX system a few months back. I had used an old drive and failed to keep regular backups. When it failed, I rebuilt everything on my own time. The customer paid for the development time and products. It was my failure to backup.
It's not likely I will bring suit against the Mormons for doing this. First off, they have a lot more money; secondly, they have lawyers who can win every single time; thirdly, I actually support them in this effort.
In fact, I would be first in line to protest any law that allowed a copyright owner to trash someone's computer because he thought they'd violated his copyrights!
Hey, that's what we have the Second Amendment for anyway ~ to obtain redress of grievance when the government is on the side of tyranny.
Golly, is tomorrow a slow news day??
I am sure that they can find something in the tens of thousands of laws to destroy your computer for.
Kind of Totalitarian really, "you are morally wrong and broke the law because we said so. It says so in the law right here" kind of logic.
I've always been curious, can you copywrite sound? Is it the sequence of notes or what? Its obviously not the physicality since they are being created on other pcs. Kazaa Lite is the best thing to happen to music since the radio
Free the Music!
I can answer that. YES. Why? Because "intellectual property" -- especially in such loose forms has copyright and patent have become is expansive. There is no check to it. A powerful holder of such an expansive grant to use of the Force of the State on his behalf -- which is what a copyriight is -- the right for Eisner, say, to call down the Federal Hounds of Hell on you, for viewing a pirate copy of "Steamboat Willy". Wait!
That's not enough of the analogy -- I beg you read on --
Walt Disney made "Steamboat Willy" in 1923. When made the limited duration of the copyright was then set in law as 14 years, with provision to request an extension at the end of that for another 14. Interpreted as a contract that grant would mean images others might produce or copy of Mickey Mouse returned as property of the owner of the physical item on which the image appeared in 1951.
Yet the Federal Government under sway of the forces of the near-nobility established by such "grants of title" by the State -- the legislature, the excutive and the judiciary, all three -- has magically transformed a "contract" between the government acting as agent of "We, the People" and the copyright grantee into something that can ONLY be construed to be a grant of a State Sovereign, and not an agent. That is NOBILITY.
"Steamboat Willy" and Mickey Mouse remain the sole NOBLE RIGHT of Lord Eisner and his Disney Corporation.
* * * *
And there is the GIST of it. By the ever expansive intrepretation of the copyright and patent clause, we have become Subjects of the State, and of the Nobles to whom the State choses to grant "intellectual property" to.
So YES, history can be and WILL be copyrighted. Such absolute power is not slack in finding its extremes.
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