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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?
If this won't help bringing linux to the desktop, what will?? you can give them every right you want... For them to enforce it, you'll HAVE to be running windows! ;-)
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
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.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Under the proposed anti-terrorism laws, wouldn't this make the RIAA a terrorist organisation?
My other sig is funny!
and when they try to break into it, sue them via DCMA and tell them to take a fly f*ck and leave my personal property alone!
I don't have pirated stuff on there, and I don't want them snooping around my system
`find / -name "*your_base*" -exec chown us:us {} \;`
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.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.
spacefem.com
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.
The anti-salmon
I get it now... according to the RIAA, I'm guilty until proven innocent. They want to be able to crack my system in order to prove me innocent. Oh, and if they fry my system, sorry, but I can't do anything about it.
Skivvy Niner? Email me!
HEY! Look left just ONE MORE TIME!
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?
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Read the license to Win XP carefully. It has a part in it that says that Microsoft may disable your access to copyrighted content at any time without notice upon request by content owners.
What is most disturbing however, is that those folks are not responsible for consequential damage, according to the article.
Uuups, sorry we trashed your hard disk. Here's a 3$ off voucher for the new Britney Spears CD.
If a web site defacer could wind up in jail for life, then the same measures should apply to corporate entities.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Will the last geek to leave America, please turn Slashdot off? Thanks.
I knew there was something insidious about an organization that trains brownshirts in survival skills.
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....sig
I think this is a great idea. People who copy music and distribute it on the internet are robbing artists of their rightful earnings. After all, the RIAA is really just a kind of charity that collects money for poor musicians.
I think they should go further. They should allow the RIAA to break into people's houses to check that they don't have any music copies on cassette. If they do, the RIAA should be allowed to smash up their music system. And crap on their carpet.
it says nothing about hacking into comuters and deleting files. Wired no doubtedly knows this, but they also know this headline will get them several thousand hits today
Here's the full text (emphasis mine):
'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 authorship, or any person authorized by such owner to act on its behalf, that are reasonably intended to impede or prevent the unauthorized transmission of such work by wire or electronic communication of such transmission would infringe the rights of the copyright owner.''
It looks like they are trying to come up with a way to detect if mp3s are being transmitted, and block it.
RIAA already claims that they have the right to hack your box if there is sufficient evidence (for them) that you are engaging in illegal distribution of their copyrighted material. Any 'incidental' damage to your computer outside of their copyrighted material was just side effects and not their fault, according to how their read the law.
The rub here is that in the recently passed USA bill, any act of hacking that incures more than $5k of damages could be concidered as a terrorist act, and thus, if RIAA were to accidently wipe your hard drive with their hacking attempts, that could be a terrorist act.
So RIAA was trying to get language added to the USA bill that would protect hacking done by copyright owners from being considered a terrorist threat, allowing them to continuing following the law as they believe they can already.
Apparently, if they've done this, no one has sued them, traced them, or otherwise indicated that their mp3's have suddenly disappeared. As it stands, I think it's a rather questionable application of the law and I wonder if further legal investigation of it should be done.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
There is no such thing as 'the right thing to do' when it comes to the RIAA.
the "we claim to denounse the 'vigilante' actions of music piraters, but we are trying to become legally-protected vigilantes" hypocricy is, well, baffling. I don't think that any sane body of people could come up with anything as fundamentally and legally wrong. The RIAA just makes itself out to be a body of mentally-imbalanced sociopaths.
How far does the RIAA plan to take this? The mention of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is not only symbolically but literally relevant. Will the RIAA start burning books because we could translate the music into multiple sinusoidal equations and print it on paper? Are they going to get 'expert witnesses' to testify that the human brain never loses any data which it receives, and thus the human brain itself is a physical medium of piracy? Will they then lobotomize me to get their song back?
Of course this is an exaggeration... however, it is more possible today than it was yesterday.
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
"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.
The anti-salmon
I put one mp3 file on the ftp server and they can say that every download constitutes a lost sale on the CD which has that song. Pricing a CD at $20 that is 250 downloads.
You really need to learn the New Math companies use to determine on-line damage.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
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.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
to: alt.virii, alt.h4x0r, comp.sec.black-hat
subject: l33t h4x0r5 w4nt3d!!!!!111111
W3 wnat j00! if j00 c4n rwit3 b4d-455 viri1 liek s1rc4M, & c0d3 rde, w3 w4nt j00 to h4x0r f0r u5!!!!11111
phr34k in2 th3 b0X3n 0f l4m3r5 ru0nd th3 wl0rd 4nd t4a5h0r th33r MP3Z... l3g4lly!!!!111111 m4k3 m0n3y f45t!!!!!!11111111```````
w3'll 3v3n g3ts j00 a t3ch-g33nisu v33sa 1f j00 rw0t3 c0d3 rde 4nd l1v35 n1 ch1n0r!!!!!!1111
--The RIAA... ph33r us!!!!!!11111
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
And as they roll out each hit one by one each hit is worth the $20 in and of itself. After all, once one song gets played to death you need a new song to milk that money out of the people holding out (You bastards!)
If we were playing Paranoid I think I'd have to say you owed the RIAA $60US for that song. < evil grin >
And what do you mean theoretical?
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
That's why a new amendment to the proposed amendment gives them the right to burn down your house as long as such action is "intended to impede or prevent the infringement of copyright". Of course you could sing the songs. Well a Senator from South Carolina wants to add murder to the list of measures copyright holders are allowed to use. Its called the "Rightsholder Lethal Self-help Authorization Act". Cool, the acronym even ends in "AA".
Of course infringement is not going to be a big problem, since the new version of the SSSCA expands the definition of an "interactive digital device" to include humans, so the neural implants required under the Act will keep things under control. And if someone tries to infringe, it can be set to kill them on the spot. After all, no one has the right to infringe, and it must be stopped by any means necessary. Any collateral damage is the fault of the infringer - if they didn't want to be electrocuted from within, they could have chosen not to infringe.
;)
(yes this is sarcastic, but you can see the parallels to what the copyright cartel is trying to do)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!