Hearing on Hollywood Hacking Bill

DaveAtFraud writes "CNN says that Hilary Rosen and the RIAA are once again lobbying Congress for the right to sabotage P2P networks. Of course, Hilary says that the RIAA wouldn't abuse this capability. Luckily, some of the lawmakers are dubious. Also, Rep. Rick Boucher asked, 'What are the implications for the Internet's functionality when the inevitable arms race develops?' and pointed out that overzealous attempts to enforce existing copyright law had all too often targetted legitimate postings." There's also a News.com story.

Comments

Does RIAA really think they'll win?

[raehl]

Doesn't RIAA see that there just so many more internet users with so much more skill arrayed against them that they're just going to lose? No matter what copy protection scheme they come up with, or P2P assault software they write, their targets will stay one step ahead of them. They can't possibly pay for enough bandwidth to attack everyone with files they don't like - or even find all the files.

You have to wonder how people this obvlivious to a free market managed to become an executive anywhere. It's simple: There is a demand to easily share music files. Users will use the least expensive means to satisfy that demand. As long as the RIAA's members insist on charging too much for access to an inferior system, users will refuse to use that system. It doesn't matter how many p2p networks or users you take down if the easiest solution is still to just set up another p2p network.

If the RIAA wants to make a killing on music sharing, they'd just offer a system that actually WORKS. People WOULD pay for a system that offerred reliable connections to the files they wanted. Don't sell the music, sell the connection to the music.