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MPAA Requests Immunity to Commit Cyber-Crimes
The news has been buzzing around for the last couple of days that Representative Berman, whose palm has been crossed with silver by the entertainment industry, would introduce a bill permitting copyright holders to hack or DoS people allegedly distributing their works without permission. Well, the bill has been introduced - read it and weep. Although the bill wouldn't allow copyright owners to alter or delete files on your machine, they would be allowed to DoS you in essentially any other way. Let me restate that: the MPAA and RIAA are asking that they be allowed to perform what would otherwise be federal and state criminal acts and civil torts, and you will have essentially no remedy against them under any laws of the United States.
As of a few days ago if citizen do these same things they can be considered terrorists and subject to a maximum sentance of life in prison. Now who again is being helped by our lawmakers now?
jello.
aka aron.
MPAA - 'Can we have immunity from laws designed to protect the computer infrastructure and commit damaging acts against networks and computers that don't belong to us?' - Pending
John Ashcroft and Federal LEO's - 'Can we have immunity from the fourth ammendment and commit invasion of privacy against americans?' - Denied up until 9-11, then granted, despite the fact that they already had information about the WTC attacks. Permanent acception is pending the Patriot act's expiration date.
George Bush and Oil Industry CEOs - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting the environment and virgin wilderness in order to increase our profits and control of the energy industry by drilling in Alaskan wilderness and completely ignoring global warming and any other environmental concerns that are too expensive for us to worry about?' - Pending.
What's next?
Preists - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting children from molestation and rape so we can get our jollies with 9 year olds?'
Corporate Executives - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting our investors and the general public so that we can pad our pocketbooks and live lives of luxury?'
Police - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting citezens from police brutality so that we can beat, maim or kill with impunity?'
The Rich - 'Can we have immunity from laws protecting people from slavery and oppression so that we can further entrench our selves in oligarchy and profit from the abuse of our fellow humans'?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
It would still be the law until the Supreme Court rules it unconstitutional, if it passes. A lot of laws that are contrary to the constitution don't get challenged, so the Supreme Court can't strike them down. Hopefully, we can keep it from passing. It is time for everyone to start faxing their Congressmen. E-mail is too easy to ignore, and snailmail takes too long if it even gets there. When elections come around in November, anyone who supported this should be voted out. Slashdotters need to get politically involved.
Also, consumers can boycott the movie and music industries. It is our money they use to bribe Congressmen and Senators. Don't give them any.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
You must be a troll (or a cartel lackey ... the hotmail account should give it away I suppose).
... they are preparing the public consciousness for exactly this event ... having the industry and government thugs come into our personal lives and, in a very personal way, tell us exactly what we can and cannot do.
A lot of people around here think there's no harm in hackers doing that to other people's computers, going so far to squeal when they get "ratted out" by others or end up in court for their actions.
Very few here thing that illegally cracking system security and breaking into computer systems is a "good thing." A fair number of people take exception to the absurd disparity between sentences and the severity of the crime, but few (if any) argue that engaging in this sort of behavior is in any way a positive act.
But when governments and large corporations can go around vandalizing and harming people legally, and the law makes it illegal to defend against such acts (by perhaps doing the same thing) for individuals, then, by any definition, we live under tyranny.
As uncool to say, and as extreme as it sounds, the digital sky is truly falling. Our freedom of expression is under wholesale and organized and concerted attack from both the media cartels and Microsoft, and the tame politicians they have in their pockets, and the reasonable sounding denials of these very stark facts don't make them any less true. We will either wake up and get involved politically and socially, educating our representatives and the lay public about these issues, or, just like the British Crown did with the printing press when it enacted the first iteration of copyright law, we will have the modern, digital equivelent of the printing press taken from us. In other words, our ability to speak and publish freely, and be heard, will be taken from us, and modern general purpose computers as we've come to know them will become a very restricted item.
Even Microsoft is publicly admitting that the end of open computing is at hand
If you are such a lackey, or so blinded by your own petty greed or agenda, that you cannot see this coming, then you will no doubt be getting exactly what you deserve. Unfortunately, the rest of us, who have the observational and congnative skills that exceed those of the common garden slug, will be taken down into the pit along with you.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
First, copyright holders were allowed to take you to civil court for theft of copyrighted material, which was all well and good. Then, the big guys realized that civil proceedings cost them money, so they paid for a law (DMCA) that would make copyright violations a criminal offense so the government would foot the bill. And now that they aren't getting the results they wanted from the government they want to legalize vigilante justice? I guess buying your politicians in bulk really pays off...
do not read this line twice.
Sure you could use the link above to write in electronically, and that's fine, but you should more or less expect that if you don't write a physical letter then you'll be ignored. It's not always competely true, but it's true enough. If you don't write your rep and this thing passes then you've pretty much forfieted your bitching rights.
Behold the Power of Cheese!
If the MPAA or RIAA decides they want to DDoS him for sharing their material, it's darn sure going to impact my EverQuest and Warcraft III connections (as well as whatever more "legitimate" uses I may be putting my bandwidth to).
Will non-infringers who suffer such collateral damage have any recourse against the companies or trade groups who are "protecting their rights"?
Hmm...no cancelled checks in my account made out to any Congressmen, so I somehow doubt it.
What this bill boils down to, is that a group wants a special privelege to defend itself against a crime that has technically not occurred. They're asking for the ability to act as an arm of the judicial system, wherein they can determine whether a crime has been committed and determine the proper remedy, and then become an agent of the executive, and actually dole out the punishment.
Not a whole lot of due process going on here.
Everytime this appears we get a bunch of "we'll show them posters" threatening all kinds of interesting punishments. Forget it.
If/When the law passes each attempt to hack into their computers for any reason will be met with the recently passes "capital crime" of hacking punishment.
You are an individual. They are a corporation.
You are a terrorist. They are protecting the rights of American copyright holders.
You will get 5 - 25 years. They will get new releases on how good a job they are doing stopping these kids from stealing their products.
They donate large sums of money to congress. You are listed as a non-voting demographic. [Better than opposition party or extremist, you are a non-entity.]
I will be surprised if this makes the nightly news anywhere. They want this to be a non-story and will pay plenty to keep it that way. Any story that does arise will be spinning the "protecting America against copyright theft."
If you really want to do something, take five minutes, right now and FAX your representatives [You could try email. Are they any better at reading them today than last year?].
Be polite, be firm and be specific. DMCA got passed because many people expected someone else(our representatives) to see the lunacy in the approach. This just proves we can never underestimate the ability of smart people to do dumb things with the right incentive.
Here are the contacts:
Senate Locator
House of Representative Locator
Do it now
- (B) causes economic loss to any person
other than affected file traders; or
- (C) causes economic loss of more than $50.00 per impairment to the property of the affected file trader, other than economic loss involving computer files or data made available through a publicly accessible peer-to-peer file trading network that contain works in which the owner has an exclusive right granted under section 106;
This means that if they dos someone on my local cable segment then I can sue them if it impacts my bandwidth, Comcast can sue if it deprives their customers of service and/or uses their resources, and all the backbones and other service providers whose bandwidth is eaten up can call for reimbursement.The two downsides of this is that the bill is not limited to dos. It is pretty wide open in that they can do pretty much anything technologically which has the effect of "disabling, interfering with, blocking, diverting, or otherwise impairing the unauthorized distribution, display, performance, or reproduction" of their material. Which includes crashing or otherwise rendering inoperable network communications on the computer.
Not only that, but anyone who tries to face up to them needs very deep pockets to fight them - even if they caused more than $50 of damage they'll still have to prove it in court.
In other words, "Shoot now, ask questions later" and "You are guilty until proven innocent" should be stamped across this bill.
Translation: Fight the bill here and now. It'll be ten times more difficult and costly to remove it from law than it is to keep it from being placed there in the first place.
-Adam
Boycotts, legal challenges, and voting people out are all fine after the fact, but the best way to stop this is to stick a real damaging spin on it before it becomes law. The usual anti-MPAA/RIAA and copyright rants probably won't win enough media interest in time to stop this, but politicians could be convinced if the "corporate vigilante immunity law" is lumped in with the recent accounting scandals.
Write a letter or call your congressional representatives, senators, activists, and/or media outlets pointing out the audacity of big corporations to ask for special privileges and less accountability even in the face of the ongoing accounting and financial investigations. Ask them how we are supposed to trust big corporations with legal immunity from federal laws when we can't even trust them to tell the truth. Tell them that CEO's still just don't get it and that this proposed legislation is further proof that corporate lobbyists are out of control and out of touch with reality. Tell them that allowing corporations to legally unleash hackers on private citizens will be the first step on a slippery slope of immunity and abuse. Tell them that corporations can't be trusted to a lower standard than citizens - if anything they should be held to a higher standard.
Ask candidates if they are planning to support legal immunity for greedy companies that take the law into their own hands or if they are going to take a stand against corporate excess and fight this latest example of abuse of trust. Ask them if they'll stand up for the little guy, or if they plan to let corporations get away with anti-consumer vigilante tactics. With a little suggestion and the upcoming elections in mind, somebody should recognize the opportunity to run with this issue and make it totally unpaletable before it ever passes.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
I believe that the only moral response in such a case is to violate those laws. Screw the MPAA. Screw the RIAA. Screw Congress. It is time for freedom loving people to declare openly that they will not recognize copyrights held by the MPAA and RIAA.
Well, that is step one. Step two in a civil disobedience campaign would be to openly and publicly violate their copyright and fully accept the consequences of that act. You see, the point of civil disobedience is that you want to get arrested and charged under the unjust law, and you want to received the punishment mandated by that unjust law in the hopes of making the public at large aware of just how bad the law is.
Are you still down with that?
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Heh, good point.
Ya know, reading this further, since it's on the "file trader" (I love that term) to notice and complain about the action, any time you lose a file or "get hacked", you should send a letter all of the MPAA/RIAA folks asking for a report on what they removed and why (See 2A through 2C).
Since there's no way to know who actually did it, and there doesn't appear to be any reason to believe the DoJ would care to tell you, you'd have write all of them to figure it out. Wonderful law eh!
Well, I think we're all thinking one-dimensionally. There are other ways to attack a computer than flood it with packets. The bottom line is, if this bill passes, it's open game on your computer. No search warrant is required.
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