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
Would he endorse blowing out the tires of speeders to teach them about speed limits?
-PJ
Orrin, Orrin, Orrin.
Time for you to retire. LOL
I wonder what the Founding Fathers would have thought of the notion that a restauranteur has to pay for permission to sing songs for guests, even when no transcription of the music is involved.
Maybe not destroy the computer but it is very easy to erradicate all the data or hose the BIOS. Very easy.
Try having a gutless turd like voinavich for a senator... I WILL be voting against him next time around, even though he is a republican. These people are NOT our friends. And I'm finished with these nit-wits who piss and moan about handing power over to the democrats. With republicans like these, who needs democrats?!
You know what the big difference between the democrats and republicans?... If the democrats proposed a bill to immediately scrap the Bill of Rights, the republicans would quickly denounce it in favor of their plan to phase it out over the next three years.
Why not crush the car with the driver inside? That would permanently end the perp's speeding and provide a boon to the undertakig industry as well. And why not have the computer discharge a high-voltage charge to the keyboard and terminate the music downloader as well as the computer? Makes sense to me. Hatch = Booby Hatch.
If a restauranteur has his employees sing a copyrighted song like the retroactively-recopyrighted "Happy Birthday" without paying ASCAP their dues, exactly what "copying" has occurred to justify ASCAP's claims of copyright infringement?
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