Powerful Senator Endorses Destroying Computers of Illegal Downloaders (Orrin Hatch)

AP ^ | 6/17/03 | Ted Bridis

[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

[Myrddin]

I wonder if the states will take the opportunity to suck the music industry dry as they have done with tobacco and gun industries. The software vandalism could easily reach into federal, state and muncipal government offices.

[freebilly]

If you don't want to lose your computer, obey the law.

Maybe people should lose their $600,000. homes for violating sodomy laws.

One day, when your car is re-possessed by the state (because you were talking on the cell phone in violation of some law) some nice person will say--

"If you didn't want to lose your car, you should have obeyed the law."

Might be time for you to re-read Orwell....

[LibWhacker]

And to think this guy prides himself on his amazing knowledge of Senate rules and procedures, but doesn't appear ever to have heard of due process.

Hey, Senator! . . . it would be just as effective to work out ways to lock up offenders' computers and kick them offline, not to mention give at least nodding acknowledgement to the Constitution.

If you're rebooting your computer six times an hour, you're not going to download much music. Personally, I hate it when I have to reboot my computer and get back online. It can take forever. People tend to avoid sites that give them such problems like the plague!

[LPStar]

Think of the "zero-tolerance" cases where someone has lost their house because a kid secretly had a stash of dope there or their car because a previous owner left a marijuana seed there, or a huge ranch because in some never-visited area, someone (probably not the owner) was growing a few marijuana plants.

I do not support pot use and I do not support illegal copyright violations. But - enforcement must never be worse than the crime it is seeking to prevent - and enforcement must follow the constitution.

[LPStar]

That's humor!

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

I read the first couple of paragraphs here, scrolled up and checked for a link to The Onion.

[MarkL]

"There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch said.

But it's perfectly ok to violate property laws...

Mark

[Paul C. Jesup]

I can see the ads now: Republican Sen. Hatch helping Liberal Anti-War Hollywood Leftests.

[thegreatbeast]

"To think I respected this guy for fighting for Estrada and Owens, what an absolute moron, and corporate shill."
What are you talking about? Fighting? He never even forced the dems to really filibuster!
The only one who thinks Orrin Hatch is tough is his little sister. What a tool!

[MarkL]

I would love to know how one goes about remotely "destroying a computer". Are they going to send a super-high voltage charge along the power lines directly into someone's home?

Nearly every modern computer has "flash programmable" bios, that allows you to download updates and using some software, update the system bios. There are a few really nasty virus infections out there that are already capable of doing this. All you have to do is corrupt the bios, and your computer is now a beige (or black) paperweight. The only way to fix it (if you're lucky) is to return the motherboard to the manufacturer.

It would also be easy enough for a small assembly language program to delete the partition table, MBR, and boot sector of your hard drive, with the results as above.

Mark

[thegreatbeast]

Exactamente.

[thegreatbeast]

I never thought of it that way until I heard Noam Chomsky say it. Who woulda thought he could be right about anything?

[Roscoe]

He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."

How about the computers of record companies who distribute "sampled" rap "music"?

[bvw]

They would have thought copyright applied to such stuff, ridiculous. They really did have music back then -- they had music and music publishing. The publishing -- the printing of a JS Bach sonata was a "Useful Art", but its composition was not. In otherwords the Founders would have been excedingly UNLIKELY to recoginize a transcription by ear and memory to paper, instrument or voice as covered by COPYRIGHT.

That is a published sheet of music could have been copyrighted -- the MUSIC itself could not have been copyrighted. The printing, the packaging, was the "Useful Art", the music was not.

[TomGuy]

Well, dipdung, how many copyrights have you applied for and received?

I have 6 formal copyrights [full copyright process/forms completed with US Copyright Office] to my credit, in addition to a dozen non-formal copyrights (yes, dipdung, non-formal copyrights can exist too).

[wizzler]

Do you have any intention of responding to the substance of my post, or are you gonna actually try to get away with a "my blank is bigger than your blank" argument?

(In this case -- copyrights -- your blank isn't bigger than my blank. But that's all irrelevant to the debate.)

[dsc]

Personally, I think the whole copyright thing needs a good rethinking.

What the other fellow said was right: it is a copyright nobility. And not just for the musicians, not even primarily for the musicians, but for parasites who have essentially no role in the creation of music.

I remember back before videos, it used to hack me off that Disney would lock their famous cartoons away for years at a time. Their property, sure, but were copyrights ever intended to last so many decades?

I find it offensive that music industry parasites are able to grossly overcharge for CDs. I'd rather pay 5 bucks direct to the artist for a file download to burn my own CD. That's more than the artist makes under the current system, anyway.

I say, cut copyrights back to a reasonable term, which under no circumstances is to outlive the creator of the work. Let the music industry scale back to a level more appropriate to the services they provide. And push for paid downloads direct from artists.

[exodus]

To: Myrddin
Your choice, violate or not. And without your working computer, how would YOU prove the "government" did it?
***********************

How do YOU prove that the government shot you dead, if they also shoot all the witnesses?

The government-ordered murders at Waco would have been easier to cover up if they hadn't made the mistake of letting the media put it out live on television. Think about how much more trust our government would have today, if they had just been smart enough to make sure there were no witnesses.

Destroying a computer is only different in degree - our Constitution makes either action illegal.

[Charles Martel]

If they wiped out years of someone's work on a hard drive, what makes you think that an adequate reprisal would be limited to a cyber reprisal?

I know... I was just scratching the surface of likely responses.

[G.Mason]

dipdung???

Your a real linguist.

That one of "your" copyrights?