Slashdot Mirror
Berman Bill Dead in the Water?
Masem writes "Last summer, Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced a bill that would legitimize computer attacks by copyright owners on those users that they believed were illegally trading copyright material; the bill recieved a fair amount of criticism for the potental viligante tactics it suggested. That session of Congress ended without resolution of the bill, though Rep. Berman promised to reintroduce it this session. However, the LA Times reports that support for the bill is nowhere as strong as before, and many believe that laws already exist that allow copyright owners to punish illegal traders; as a result, Berman appears to be unwilling to support the bill further. For example, while the MPAA supported the bill, some of the liabilities introduced into it to punish those copyright holders that went too far in their attacks were too much for the Hollywood group." Unfortunately, the LA Times site requires registration.
Username/password laexaminer/laexaminer.
Or I could just post the whole thing.
Rep. Berman May Not Revive Internet Piracy Bill
By Jon Healey, Times Staff Writer
Rep. Howard L. Berman said he may abandon his controversial proposal to help Hollywood battle Internet piracy, in part because of complaints from an unexpected source: Hollywood.
Berman (D-Van Nuys) introduced a bill in July to give movie studios, record companies and other copyright holders limited immunity from lawsuits if they used technology to block piracy on file-sharing networks such as Kazaa or Gnutella. The immunity would not have applied to tactics that damaged users' computers or legitimate file-sharing activities.
The measure, which died when Congress adjourned last year, drew heavy flak from consumer advocates who said it would encourage copyright owners to become network-snarling vigilantes. Nevertheless, Berman was widely expected to try again this year with a revised version of the bill.
This week, however, Berman said he may not revive the measure. For one thing, copyright holders may not need extra protection to combat file-sharing piracy, he said. And though Berman wasn't deterred by complaints from consumer advocates, the concerns voiced by Hollywood studios -- among the biggest beneficiaries of the bill, given their active anti-piracy efforts online -- suggested that Berman was climbing out on a limb by himself.
In particular, Hollywood's enthusiasm for the bill was dimmed by Berman's insistence on imposing new liabilities on copyright holders that go too far in attacking pirates. "And if they're not for it," Berman asked, "where am I going?"
His comments came in an interview at a conference on copyrights and consumer rights at Intel Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif. "It still may be worth doing," Berman said of the proposal, "but realistically, a bill like this isn't going to zip through Congress."
Rich Taylor, a spokesman for the Motion Picture Assn. of America, said "the essence of the legislation makes all the sense in the world." However, some MPAA members were concerned about the new liabilities, and some doubted the need for the bill, he said.
"There were no self-help actions being taken in violation of state or federal laws," Taylor said.
This is not the same. For one the police are making the attack, not the 'victim'. Two this requires a court order or imediate need as decided by a police officer, which will later be reviewed by a judge.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
Of course, dorm-wide searches with dogs are done (are they? I assume they are... I mean they're done in high schools...), which I guess is like what the MPAA is planning to do, but on the other hand, the MPAA / RIAA are not police. That is what we have to remember. Despite any shortcomings of the police, they are still public defenders, whereas the MPAA / RIAA are defending one thing only: the profits of their member companies. As such, they work for different masters and would be a lot less likely to be careful with your computer.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
There is another decent article about the issue right here
Or the ever popular google cache here
I usually find that
username: nopass
password: nopass
works on most newspaper sites....
pretty easy to remember...
:P
Congratulations, you're voting for politicians who openly take bribes. Back in my days, they at least did it in secret.
Er, it's a plain fact that there are already laws for the punishment of copyright infringement. This makes it sound as if it's an unsolved mystery like sightings of UFOs or Bigfoot.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Assuming you define "hack" very narrowly as disruption of illegal traffic on P2P networks, that is pretty much exactly what the bill says, although there are numerous safeguards against abuse written into it. Specifically, the copyright holder is not authorized to do any damage to a network or computer, only to disrupt their ability to share the copyrighted material. It also explicitly disallows affecting any user that is not participating in the filesharing, which makes the entire act paradoxical because there is no kind of disruption that can be applied without, at minimum, reducing quality-of-service on the Internet as a whole by virtue of the extra packets required to launch the attack.
I just wish they'd pass a law that says I can divide by zero. That would save me a lot of compiler errors...
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
this seems to work for me in Opera and IE, even though Mozilla is my prefered browser
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Just imagine, you could justify a DDOS attack on the RIAA because they *might* have a copy of your copyrighted armpit fart.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Actually, it damn near happened, as it was brought up for debate and passed in the house. The only thing that killed it was the lucky presence of a (real) mathematician who was there for other reasons, who had the time to "educate" the senators.
Some things never change.
Also, the math the sponsor introduces is convoluted and wrong, and he came up with 3.2.
Links: Here and Here
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat