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.
Who is Berman Bill? And why should I care if he drowned?
E000-VB14-G8RY
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.
so, what we're saying is, if a hacker makes up a song and slaps a copyright on it, that gives him legitamate reason to hack because "he believed the people were illegally using his copyrighted song???"
hrrm
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.
Damn it. When I first saw this article, I interpreted it as "Rick Berman is now sleeping with the fishes, see?" I couldn't wait to find out the gory details.
What a let-down.
-- "I believe the human being and the fish can coexist peacefully." - George W. Bush, 29 September 2000
Not similar at all.
The police are the government. The MPAA isn't.
What if I run an Operating system and a firewall secure enough to keep them out. Will then I be guilty not only of pirating, but also of "protecting myself against legal privacy theft" ?
Netcraft confirms it: the Berman Bill is dying
Another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered RIAA committee when Slashdot confirmed that support for the Berman Bill was at an all-time low. The Berman Bill is collapsing into complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Slashdot Popular Bill Poll.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict the Berman Bill's future. The handwriting is on the wall: the Berman Bill faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all because the Berman Bill is dying. Things are looking very bad for the Berman Bill. As many of us are already aware, the Berman Bill continues to lose support. Funding has dried up and red in flows like a river of blood.
All major surveys show that the Berman Bill has steadily declined in voter support. The Berman Bill is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If the Berman Bill is to survice at all it will be among RIAA executives and dabblers. The Berman Bill continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, the Berman Bill is dead
Trolling is a art,
In all I've read about the Berman bill, I've never completely understood why vigilantism was considered OK in this instance. For instance, I would not be allowed to shoot a man should he rape my girlfriend; nor would I be able to steal back my property from a robber. Why are copyright holders special? Why is copyright infringement so heinous?
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
Had the bill gone thru , would it be then illegal to protect my PC from possible hollywood hacking?
Can i go to jail for installing a firewall and blocking all ports ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
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).
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
The neighborhood watch kicking in the door that they might think might be a drug dealer and demand that they prove that they are not drug dealers by giving blood tests, urin tests, the bugging of telephones, and the installation of cameras in every room of the house.
Fight Spammers!
Congratulations, you're voting for politicians who openly take bribes. Back in my days, they at least did it in secret.
This said, does the Berman Bill give me the right to haxor into any site that I believe may be harboring this data?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
It's unfortunate how naive you techies are: such sweet innocence. Good riddance to bad legislation, huh? Well here's the slashdot word of the day: rider. Can you say rider boys and girls?
Rider - An amendment, usually not germane, that it's sponsor hopes to get through more easily by including it in other legislation. Riders become laws if the bills they are attached to are enacted. The House, unlike the Senate, has strict germaneness rules, so riders are usually Senate devices to get legislation enacted quickly or to bypass possible opposition.
Legislation is usually mostly good with some bad, this was simply bad on it's own.
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
sPh
This ruins everything! I have been seeding the Internet for the last few months with copyrighted material as part of my three step plan to profit.
If this doesn't pass my plans are going to be reduced to a bad joke!
me karma am bad
I have exchanged numerous emails with my congressman (Rep Robert Wexler, 19th district FL) on this topic, as he is a cosigner of the bill. As recently as this weekend, I received another message from him indicating his ongoing support for the legislation. Perhaps if Berman drops it, this will be the end of the discussion. Nonetheless, /.ers may find this humorous:
I have repeatedly criticised the bill to him on the grounds that it is prima facie impossible for a P2P vigilante to launch an attack against a file trader without collateral damage to innocents on the same network who necessarily suffer loss of quality of service simply by virtue of having to share bandwidth with one more person (the vigilante). In spite of several attempts to put this idea into much simpler terms than presented here, the message never seemed to get through to him. He remains confident that by writing the law to explicitly forbid damages to nonparticipating networks or computers, that this will somehow make it so. It sort of reminds me of the legends of a proposal in the Indiana legislature (though this is probably just a Kentuckian joke) that pi should be exactly 22/7. It may be physically impossible, but goldurnit, we're gonna write the law anyway!
So, basically what they would do is pass a law that made it legal for copyright owners to disrupt P2P networks, but write it in such a way that it would be impossible for the vigilantes to exercise that right because they couldn't do so without engaging in prohibited activity: namely reduction in QoS for users who were not participating in the exchange. It's either a fantastic example of pure congressional ignorance of technological (heck, basic physical) reality, or evidence of a level of cynicism previously unimagined; that they would spend all this time tossing a bone to the *AAs with a rubber band attached.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Suppose a piece of artwork in a gallery is copyrighted. You take a picture knowing that doing so is illegal. Perhaps you even do this covertly. You go home and you reproduce the photograph life-size and hang it on your livingroom wall or something. You may show it to a few friends, but you're the only one who has it.
One evening, armed burgulars hired by the gallery break into your house, and steal the photo from you. Well, maybe under the words of the bill, they might just take photos of the the photo hanging on your wall, but they still broke into your house. Imagine if that were legal. Quite scary.
Oh yeah, I forgot the part where you go to jail and reimburse the gallery for breaking into your house and pay them whatever damages they incurred from the photo that was hanging on your wall.
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.
Naive? Us? ;)
;)
Seriously, you can't paint all of Slashdot with one brush. Nope, it takes several brushes, multiple coats, and you still miss a few highly mobile spots. After all, you've got youngsters still in school, college students, and old hands with a decade or two or more of experience from the US, Canada, and other parts of the world. Some are going to be a bit naive, but not all of us.
As for the rider idea, sorry, it's been tried already. A version of this bill was first attempted as a rider to the USA PATRIOT Act. Congress had enough wisdom to detach it before the act was passed. A great pity for the cause of liberty that the whole act was not tossed in the round file.
It flopped as both a rider and a bill. I doubt it has a ghost of a chance of passing now without intervention from on high. Disney would have to do some serious shrub worship, both in financial contributions and a movie about a heroic planting on fire with a courageous crusade to topple evildoers worldwide.
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
George W. Bush, December 18, 2002
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
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