Technology Breakdown: Stop The Insanity!

This law will make it legal to hack into your computer to check for copywritten material.

TECHNOLOGY BREAKDOWN: Stop The Insanity!
by Russell de Pina

(Jul. 25, 2002) A piece of legislation (if you can call it that) proposed by Reps. Howard Berman (D-CA) and Howard Coble (R-NC) is the latest reason why candidates for public office should have to pass an intelligence test. These two mental giants have prepared a bill that effectively permits copyright holders to hack your computer if they [copyright holders] believed that copyright infringement was going on. Wait a minute – aren’t we getting ready to bomb the crap out of Iraq because state-sponsored terrorism is a bad thing? What gives?
Yep, that’s right. If this bill passes, the US Congress will give Hillary Rosen and Jack Valenti, the respective grand poo-bahs at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), permission to “impair the operation of peer-to-peer networks.” Other notables on the bus to Stupidtown include Reps. John Conyers of Michigan, Lamar Smith of Texas, and Robert Wexler of Florida as sponsors of this pig of a bill. It is noteworthy, that Berman represents the San Fernando Valley – home to the vast majority of Hollywood executives. I guess we know where his campaign money came from.

Basically, the copyright owners who paid for this bill are trying to get out the message that peer-to-peer file sharing is bad must be stopped regardless of already existing laws dealing with computer piracy, security, etc. Under this bill, a copyright holder could legally invade your system, rendering it inoperable, even to the extent of deleting files. Here’s the kicker – if they mistakenly do harm to your system, the burden of proof is on YOU!

Fritz Attaway, MPAA Vice President of Government Relations, endorsed the Berman bill on Monday, saying “the MPAA is not interested in invading your computer and doing malicious things with your files, that the MPAA wants to make unauthorized file sharing inconvenient or unsuccessful.” Yeah right. In the early days of the Napster war, Hillary Rosen openly considered posting viruses on Napster and other networks as a means of stopping file sharing, and backed away from that opinion only when informed that spreading viruses is illegal.

Over the last few years, the recording and movie industry has shown nothing but contempt for any technology that empowers the consumer – particularly with respect to distribution. The reason is obvious – the Internet channel substantially tilts the balance of power into the hands of the ARTIST – not the distributor, with the consumer being the beneficiary. I said it before and I’ll say it again, if the government is going to prosecute Microsoft, then the RIAA, MPAA and their constituencies should be next up on the docket. Mind you, this is not to say that I condone copyright violation. Creators of intellectual property should be protected, but vigilantism – regardless of what side of the fence you are on, is just plain wrong. If it’s illegal for me to hack the RIAA website because I think the recording industry robs me by charging me $20 for a CD that costs less than a penny to manufacture, then it should be wrong for them to invade a private citizen’s computer because they suspect a copyright violation. Wise Up!

Russell de Pina is a Principal with n2active, a technology consulting firm located in Long Beach, CA and Houston, TX. Russell can be reached via email at .

http://eurweb.com/articles/columns/07252002/columns751107252002.cfm