RIAA Abandons Hacking Amendment

CJMClark writes "Looks like the RIAA has come to its senses (partially, at least). This update on Wired News apparently indicates that the RIAA has decided to back down from its earlier proposed amendment that would allow copyright owners to be absolved of responsibility for collateral damage due to hacking into an individual's PC to delete copyrighted files." This has gotta be fictitious.

Comments

PR requires caring about Public Opinion

[eclectric]

The RIAA doesn't sell anything directly. It has no customers it needs to keep happy. That's what lobbying groups are for, so that actual companies don't have to get their hands dirty. Even if people despise the RIAA for this, most of them aren't going to know that Sony is a member, and even less are going to know the individual labels (like, say, Epic) are a part of sony. So really, the don't run any risk proposing something like this.

Extra ! RIAA momentarily forgets rest of world !

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting how many of the large multinationals believe once they have managed to fool the US legal system that they are then immune to retribution from any idiocy on their behalf globally. As we saw in the article where the EU is in the process of a lawsuit against Microsoft that could result in a penalty of 10% yearly earnings should they continue to bundle everything into their OS, I can imagine that with the EU's strict privacy legislation already in force, any attempts by the RIAA to sniff a user's HDD would result in massive penalties (even if it were accidental). So that probably rules out the RIAA creating automated software to go hacking through other people's computer.

They would have to do all of this manually, painfully, slowly, inefficiently (in case of European "collateral damage"). It would cost them more money to hire the people doing it, then they would save attempting to eradicate piracy. After all, if word did get out that they were deleting other files, then I imagine it would cause them much more trouble than it's worth.

Maybe they are just testing the Orwellian waters to see what the temperature of public opinion is right now. After all, the GM food industry has managed to push an 80%+ disapproval for modified organisms in Australia down to 50% in the past few years. As long as they continually bring up outrageous proposals, eventually the shock factor goes down among the populace and people will settle for something disasterous in small steps, as though it is inevitable.