[free-sklyarov] Fwd: pho: Wired News :RIAA Wants to Hack Your PC

[Karsten M. Self]

Interesting twist on the USA act and the sudden outrage of the RIAA --
mafia racket for Sony, EMI, Warner, BMG, Universal and 600 other lables
to strong-arm their customers -- at discovering they might not be able
to counter-hack fair-use practitioners.

on Mon, Oct 15, 2001 at 06:54:58PM +0200, Janko Roettgers (janko.roettgers at web.de) wrote:
> 
> Interesting story. Any suggestions how far the new bill would
> interfere with effords to snoop into P2P-networks like Aimster
> and such? Is the loss of privacy (someone browses through your
> shared folders) already a "damage"?
> 
> ============================================================
> 
>  From Wired News, available online at:
> http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,47552,00.html
> 
> RIAA Wants to Hack Your PC  
> By Declan McCullagh  
> 
> 2:00 a.m. Oct. 15, 2001 PDT 
> 
> WASHINGTON -- Look out, music pirates: The recording industry wants
> the right to hack into your computer and delete your stolen MP3s.  
> 
> It's no joke. Lobbyists for the Recording Industry Association of
> America (RIAA) tried to glue this hacking-authorization amendment onto
> a mammoth anti-terrorism bil l that Congress approved last week.
> 
> A copy of an RIAA-drafted amendment obtained by Wired News would
> immunize all copyright holders -- including the movie and e-book
> industry -- for any data losses ca used by their hacking efforts or
> other computer intrusions "that are reasonably intended to impede or
> prevent" electronic piracy.
> 
> In an interview Friday, RIAA lobbyist Mitch Glazier said that his
> association has abandoned plans to insert that amendment into
> anti-terrorism bills -- and instead i s supporting a revised amendment
> that takes a more modest approach.
> 
> "It will not be some special exception for copyright owners," Glazier
> said. "It will be a general fix to bring back current law." Glazier is
> the RIAA's senior vice presi dent of government relations and a former
> House aide.
> 
> The RIAA's interest in the USA Act, an anti-terrorism bill that the
> Senate and the House approved last week, grew out of an obscure part
> of it called section 815. Call ed the "Deterrence and Prevention of
> Cyberterrorism" section, it says that anyone who breaks into c
> omputers and causes damage "aggregating at least $5,000 in value" in a
> one-year period would be com mitting a crime.
> 
> If the current version of the USA Act becomes law, the RIAA believes,
> it could outlaw attempts by copyright holders to break into and
> disable pirate FTP or websites or p eer-to-peer networks. Because the
> bill covers aggregate damage, it could bar anti-piracy efforts th at
> cause little harm to individual users, but meet the $5,000 threshold
> when combined.
> 
> "We might try and block somebody," Glazier said. "If we know someone
> is operating a server, a pirated music facility, we could try to take
> measures to try and prevent t hem from uploading or transmitting
> pirated documents."
> 
> The RIAA believes that this kind of technological "self-help" against
> online pirates, if done carefully, is legal under current federal law.
> But the RIAA is worried abou t the USA Act banning that practice --
> and neither the Senate nor the House versions of that bill i nclude
> the RIAA's suggested changes.
> 
> Glazier said that the RIAA was no longer lobbying for the language
> provided to Wired News -- "that's completely out" -- but instead
> wanted to ensure that current law remains the same. But Glazier said
> he could not provide a copy of the revised amendment he hopes to
> include.
> 
> Legal scholars say that the original amendment the RIAA had been
> shopping around to members of Congress raises privacy and security
> concerns.
> 
> "It could lead to some really bad outcomes, like a program
> purposefully intended to delete MP3s that misfunctions and erases
> everything on a disk -- ooops," s ays Marc Rotenberg, director of the
> Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Think a repo man smashi ng
> windows and knocking down doors to pull out the 27-inch color TV when
> you've missed a couple of payments."
> 
> Peter Swire, a former top privacy official under President Clinton and
> now a professor at Ohio State University, says he hopes there would be
> public debate on any such pr oposal.
> 
> "On its face, this language would allow a deliberate hack attack by a
> copyright owner against the system of someone who is infringing the
> copyright," Swire said.
> 
> The draft amendment is overly broad and poorly-written, says Orin
> Kerr, a former Justice Department lawyer now at George Washington
> University. Says Kerr: "It would deny victims their right to sue
> copyright owners and their agents if they engaged in vigilante just
> ice by hacking or other means in an effort to block online music
> distribution."
> 
> "Another troubling thing is that they appear to be trying to limit
> their liability for consequential damages," says R. Polk Wagner, an
> assistant professor at the Univ ersity of Pennsylvania's law school.
> "What if their efforts caused your hard disk to become fatally
> corrupted?"
> 
> An aide on Capitol Hill who had been contacted by the RIAA was even
> more blunt, dubbing the amendment the "RIAA's License to Virus"
> proposal.
> 
> For its part, the RIAA is still trying to get a copy of its revised
> amendment -- that it would not provide a copy of -- included in the
> anti-terrorism bill called the USA Act.
> 
> "It didn't make it into the Senate bill," says the RIAA's Glazier. "So
> the great work of the Senate staff to fix this unintentional problem
> didn't get through. Now we're in the House with the base language that
> could have these unintended consequences."
> 
> On Friday, the House voted 339-79 for the USA Act, which eases limits
> on wiretapping and Internet monitoring. The Senate approved the bill
> on Thursday.
> 
> Because neither the House nor the Senate versions of the USA Act
> include either variant of the RIAA's amendment, the association's
> lobbyists will focus on a possibl e conference committee, which would
> be appointed to work out differences with the Senate. Another p
> ossibility is that the Senate could enact the USA Act when senators
> return this week, automatically sending the bill to President Bush for
> his signature.
> 
> Bush has asked Congress for the additional surveillance and detention
> powers as a response to the deadly Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the
> World Trade Center and the Pen tagon.
> 
> The text of the original RIAA amendment says that "no action may be
> brought under this subsection arising out of any impairment of the
> availability of data, a program, a system or information, resulting
> from measures taken by an owner of copyright in a work of autho rship,
> or any person authorized by such owner to act on its behalf, that are
> intended to impede or prevent the infringement of copyright in such
> work by wire or electronic communication."
> 
> It also immunizes from liability actions that "are reasonably intended
> to impede or prevent the unauthorized transmission" of pirated
> materials.
> 
> 
> ===8<===========End of original message text===========
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
>  Janko                            mailto:janko.roettgers at web.de
> 
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-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>       http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?             Home of the brave
  http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/                   Land of the free
   Free Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org
Geek for Hire                     http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html
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