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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?
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.
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.
From the Wired article:
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. Called the "Deterrence and Prevention of Cyberterrorism" section, it says that anyone who breaks into computers and causes damage "aggregating at least $5,000 in value" in a one-year period would be committing 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 peer-to-peer networks. Because the bill covers aggregate damage, it could bar anti-piracy efforts that cause little harm to individual users, but meet the $5,000 threshold when combined.
I'd call this "circumventing" wouldn't you? Those intrusive bastards want carte blanche to do whatever they want, while ordinary people get screwed.
"All mankind is at the mercy of a handful of neurotics". - Norman Douglas
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
Actually, according to the article, this is already legitimate. The article cites US Code, Title 18, Section 1030
The real news in this is that the USA Anti-Terrorism bill includes language to prevent this, whereas RIAA is trying to open this loophole back up.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Excuse me, I must be halluzinating...
...
A dark cellar, somewhere in the world. One man - 1 - is examining goods in the cellar. A second man - 2 - enters...
2: FREEZE, thief! What mischief are you up to?
1: No mischief, Sir. My biclycle was stolen yesterday, and I am just looking to see if it is in your cellar.
2: You smashed a window to do this!
1: I had reasonable cause. I saw bicycles in your cellar, and you, Sir, look pretty thieverish yourself
Coming to think of it, I want this law to be passed. The nights would be exiting again!
Alex
Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder
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.
And yes, once you've been in corporate America, you'll see that this shitty money grabbing politics happens all the time. Enjoy college while you can.
And besides, the only computers they'll end up cracking into to delete files from will be the Britney Spears and NSYNC teenie bopper fans of the world, which just means that they'll be pissing off little teenage girls and boys, who will in turn cry to their parents, who will then go ballistic on the RIAA. Just another wonderful way to alienate their user base even more than they already have.
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:
"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
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.
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