RIAA Wants Right To Hack

An Anonymous Coward writes: "According to Wired, the recording industry wants the right to hack into your computer and delete your stolen MP3s." From the article: "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 bill 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 caused by their hacking efforts or other computer intrusions 'that are reasonably intended to impede or prevent' electronic piracy." Does this give you the right to crack RIAA systems to make sure no one there is selling copies of your term paper?

Comments

Farenheit 451 is here early.

[dave-fu]

If this story is true (and I doubt it is, as seen with The Register's recent retraction) then it's the scariest freaking thing I've heard of in a long time. Don't want people surreptitiously going behind my back and torching my legitimate (some of us rip our own CDs, thankyouverymuch) music collection on my hard drive.
Running with the possibility that this is true, hopefully the folks who would hack into peoples' computers will be tried as terrorists under the US's spankin' fresh new bills.

Question for the RIAA + Justice dept.

[Rob.Mathers]

Under the proposed anti-terrorism laws, wouldn't this make the RIAA a terrorist organisation?

Making your own MP3s for hacking

[Midnight Thunder]

If this got through then in theory a hacker could create their own 'tune', copyright it and let it wander the net. Then after a couple of months claim that the reason they were breaking into the FBI computer was to check that they didn't have any illegal copies of your MP3.

Are we really surprised?

[spacefem]

We all saw this coming, but that's beside the point, you know what my main thought is today?

Who are these people?

They have that much time on their hands that they're willing to hack into individual people's computers to look for their files?

At dinner parties, do they go off about mp3's and how every college kid is going to kill the record industry?

Movements like this say "passion" to me, they're passionate about their copywrites, it's what they eat, sleep, and breath. Do they have nothing better to do? Are there this many idiots in the world?

Maybe I just haven't seen enough corporate America yet, but I can't believe people make their lives out of something this petty.

ROFL! oh wait...its not april fool's day.

[fjordboy]

Ok, something like this begs several questions: First of all, how would they determined that the mp3s and whatnot on my computer aren't legal? I happen to own cds for almost every single mp3 on my computer.

Second of all, how would they go about hacking into our computers? If these guys are stupid enough to come up with such an idiotic proposal, how can we expect them to be able to hack a 386 running windows 3.1 on a network running win NT with no patches applied?

To get to the point, this is the stupidest idea I think i've ever heard in my life.

So let me see

[haplo21112]

Hacking is terrorism, but Hacking to defend copyrights is legal if you have enough Cash to by a Congressman, and get him to make legislation that says so? Have I got that right?

Re:So let me see

[imadork]

Hacking is terrorism, but Hacking to defend copyrights is legal if you have enough Cash to by a Congressman, and get him to make legislation that says so? Have I got that right?

Remember, one man's Terrorist is another man's Freedom Fighter.

Re:So let me see

[Twylite]

Terrorism involves the murder of innocents, terrorism is for cowards who have no respect for human life.

Innocence is subjective. As is terrorism.

America is bombing a nation that has supported terrorism against America. It does this after imposing sanctions against a country allied to that nation, sanctions that are causing slow death as millions starve. This act forms part of the motive for the terrorism against America. In bombing Afganistan, America is inflicting further civilian casualties.

Where is the respect for human life? America is as much to blame for murdering innocents as Bin Laden or the Taliban. Yet few people see it this way: economic sanctions, although often more crippling than all-out war, are socially acceptable. Bin Laden struck at the heart of America's economic power; an 'appropriate' response to abuse of that power.

Terrorism comes in many forms.

Re:So let me see

[WNight]

And US soldiers dropping bombs to kill Osama, who accept a few civilian casualties along the way... that's freedom fighting right? Because they kill civilians who aren't you.

Red Herring

[nyjx]

The wired article says that ammendment ddin't get through. Interestingly (from the wired article): "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 them from uploading or transmitting pirated documents."

It seems unlikely that hacking the individual machines would be the best solution for this (even if the law were to allow it). The cost would be very high. Much cheaper to do what they are now doing:

• Leaning on ISPs to cut off "abusing" users (without comeback - see previous slashdot stories)
• Suing the larger sites (napster obviously)
• Trying to stifle decryption technology.

In the long run these are likely to be 95% effective if the succeed. If their wording were to ever pass into law they would just be setting a dangerous precedent for anybody to go and explore somebody else's machine. I'm just off to RIAA's web site to "check" if they have a copy of my (copyrighted) memoires on the server...

Re:Time to get active

[fjordboy]

"STOP SUPPORTING THE RIAA"

Unfortunately, this is what Joseph Heller would call a Catch 22. One of those damned if you do, damned if you don't scenarios. If people stop buying stuff from RIAA members...then the problems would be even more dire. Then they would have "proof" that piracy is increasing because their sales are going down and people are obviously pirating the music they want. See? Either way is inefective. Sorry. I wish that would work...it would be a somewhat easy solution...get your way through economic pressure.

Re:This feature is built into the WIN XP license

[TeknoHog]

Who the fuck does MS think that they are putting something in the license that says that they can control what I have on my computer just b/c i use their OS? Excuse me but I own my computer, I own my HD, and I own their OS. They don't own me.

"The things you own end up owning you." - Tyler Durden

WAR OPPORTUNISM OF THE WORST SORT

[YIAAL]

The Bush Administration and the press had better be all over the RIAA and its Congressional sponsors. I can't think of a faster way to discredit the war on terrorism than opportunism like this.