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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.
If it applies only to big business (RIAA, MPAA, BSA), and not to joe sixpack, it's unconstitutional under the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Oh, and this post is Copyright (c) 2002, by me, "sconeu". I reserve the right to search any and all computers for unauthorized reproductions of this post.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The Register is actually looking forward to this becoming law!
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
I wonder at what point the revolt will happen. Something tells me it will be when it's far too late, and anybody trying to be proactive about it will be called a terrorist or something.
When will the American people wake up? It's so blatantly obvious to the rest of the world that your corporations are out of control. When are you going to finally realize it's time to put a leash on them?
The Canadian Private Copying Collective wants more of your money.
On top of raising existing levys, they want to tax any media that can store copyrighted material. This includes Hard drives and Flash media. While the MPAA is crashing your computer in the US the CPCC is robing you blind every time you buy recordable media.. And how much are the artists getting??? According to reports, after 2 years of the levy being collected NOTHING has been paied to ANY artist.. Theroy has it they are spending all the money lobying for higher levys.
http://www.sycorp.com/levy/index.htm
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
The MPAA would hire a couple of "consulting" companies to carry out these acts.
These consulting firms would attack and disable some script kiddies computer who is serving MP3s.
So, what does the script kiddie do? He and his bunch of script kiddies go and shut down the offending consulting firms internet connection(s) with a DoS that's about 100 times more massive (because they can use everyone elses poorly protected servers to do it). And that's just if they pick on a teenager in the US.
Say they try and shut down some actual knowledgable hacker in, say, Russia. Wait a second... why are the bank account numbers, credit card numbers, home address and telephone for the head of the MPAA up on MPAA.com? Weird.
My question is, how does this web site even stay up?
I'm sure the script kiddies internet provider will just be pleased as punch that the MPAA just hacked one of it's customers and possibly used a DoS attack to do it (there by degrading the quality of service for all their clients)
Sounds great to me. It'll work like a charm this new law (if passed).
And why does the MPAA sound like a police orginization to me?
From their website:
To battle the problem, in 2000, the MPA launched over 60,000 investigations into suspected pirate activities, and more than 18,000 raids against pirate operations in coordination with local authorities around the world.
The MPAA/MPA directs its worldwide anti-piracy activities from headquarters in Encino, California. Regional offices are also located in Brussels (Europe, Middle and Africa), Mexico (Latin America) Canada and Hong Kong (Asia/Pacific).
Uhmm... that scares me
Casual Games/Downloads
I sent off this Letter to the Editor to newspapers in Coble's 6th District in North Carolina (Greensboro, High Point, Burlington, Asheboro, Lexington) this morning, before the bill was officially introduced. Hopefully it'll get published in at least one of the papers:
######
To The Editor,
For years, Congress and law enforcement has been telling us about the dangers posed by computer hackers. They have warned computer users about how you should be on guard for the damage that hackers can do to your computer systems.
However, Rep. Howard Coble is preparing to submit a bill in Congress that would grant almost complete immunity to large music and movie companies to hack into your computers, if they have the suspicion that you might be sharing copyrighted files. No proof or involvement by law enforcement will be needed. And what's more, if they damage your computers in this vigilante action, you'll need to prove real damages of over $250 and get the permission of the US Attorney General to file suit against them.
What Rep. Coble is saying is that computer hacking is bad, unless you're a rich corporation with lots of money to provide in campaign donations. The hypocracy of such a bill is stunning. The voters of Congressional District 6 need to decide whether Rep. Coble is looking out for their interests, or Big Hollywood's.
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.
Notwithstanding
notwithstanding Pronunciation Key (ntwth-stndng, -wth-)
prep.
In spite of: The teams played on, notwithstanding the rain.
adv.
All the same; nevertheless: We proceeded, notwithstanding.
conj.
In spite of the fact that; although.
IN SPITE OF any other federal or state laws, they can do what they like.
Oh, and they can delete any file they want if it is "necessary" to prevent you from trading their copyrighted files.
Yes, it REALLY is that bad.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
Sure there is. If it passes I'll be blacklisting every RIAA and MPAA netblock I can find. I'd also nominat the for an RBL listing due to the DoSing attempts from their netspace and their disregard for abuse@ mailings. They can't DoS my customers if they can't get past my border router. If they still flood me as a business, I'll sue for damages. :-)
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.
Lets just say that I have T-1 line to the Internet and Verio is providing that line. When a DOS attack is launched it could potentialy flood every router between my box and the intiator of the attack.
Okay by law they were given the right to DOS me but not the ISP which can still file criminal charges. So, it sound like they are still shit out of luck unless the law gives them a "get out of jail free card" for all acts commited during the execution of a plan to attack the offender. Wow, now if that were the case it would open up a huge new can of worms.
"Help me Obi-/.-Kenobi,your my only hope!" -$
Did the person who wrote the Slashdot editorialization for this story even read the bill?
You're new here, aren't you?
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
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
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach