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Sen Hatch Would Like To Destroy Filetraders' PCs
CBackSlash writes "Sen. Hatch is interested in technology to remotely destroy computers. But it would only be used if you're downloading copyrighted material, and only the copyright owner should be able to wield this awesome power, since having the feds do it would be against the law. Here is the AP story from Yahoo!."
That is just pure lunacy. Hatch has said some pretty crazy
things over the years, but this has to top the list.
I've been a supporter of Hatch for several years, even helping
with the election effort on several occasions. This takes the
cake though, it's time to get fresher blood into that office.
If you want to call his office and complain (as I will):
DC Office: 202.224.5251
SLC Office: 801.524.4380
here is his website:
http://www.senate.gov/~hatch/
Please call and voice your extreme antagonism to these types of
statements. Although the other Senators called him down, he
needs to know that we hear these statements and are against them
in the extreme.
I just got off the phone with the Salt Lake Office, and they had
no idea he had made statements of this nature. In fact she was
quite taken back to hear of them. Please call and let them know
how you feel about this. If they know their voters are against
this type of behavior, they will change it.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
I guess the RIAA's stratage is as follows:
1) destroy people's computers.
2) make them hate and fear you.
3) ???
4) profit.
1) Download firewall
2) Install firewall
3) Reap vast profit of pirated material
I mean really, how hard is it to make sure your computer is up to date with patches and has a good firewall installed. Preferably with an OpenBSD/Linux(with the bare minimum installed) box physically in between your home LAN and the internet.
Not that I'm in favor of destroying people's computers (I assume this means things like reformatting people's hard drives), that's just asinine. But I do think it's OK for record companies to spoof P2P networks and try to disrupt them.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If you read his comments in context, the truth of what he said becomes obvious.
Cyberphobia among the old guard, as represented by people in Hatch's generation, has given way to overt, unbridled hatred of technology and its advocates. He views internet users as a group of miscreants who must be taught a lesson and his suggestions of remote computer destruction as a perfectly valid means of holding due process hostage to force us to solve the content industry's problems.
I am aghast.
Does anyone recall the code for Grubbnix? It was a quick hack in the early to mid 90s, but it worked quite well. Call it a cross-over between a bootloader and an OS, I suppose.
;-)
Anyways, the interesting part of Grubbnix was that it had a lot of capability and use when it came to flashing your BIOS (most major motherboard companies today still use a Grubbnix variant with their flashing utilities). I still remember one variant called Hucker (or something like that, maybe Huckey) that was spread around on disks to unsuspecting users. When you loaded it and left it running, it opened up your system enough so that someone via TCP/IP could execute commands, one of which was to completely shitfuck your BIOS, and sometimes even managed to cause damage to the CPU/motherboard by modifying threshold settings in the BIOS (depending on your model #).
It used to be passed out to "enemies" at HackerCons, who would then take it home, load it, and end up with a fucked PC.
Perhaps Senator Hatch needs to give the Cult of the Dead Cow an e-mail and see if they still have the source around somewhere
+ Donald Gunth
+ Email: dgunth@quicktek.net
"Caffeine is the greatest lubricant ever created." -ESR
Of course, the reason it is illegal for the Feds to do it is to prevent abuses. So we give it to a *less* regulated group. Greeaat.
Actually though, as long as they are still liable for any damages they inflict this will be fun. Let's see, they (will/would have) just destroyed a $1000 computer, with $10000 (and if you can't figure out a way to back that figure up you need help) of the user's own data to delete a $0.99 song. Can we spin this?
Of course, it is better to stop this now, before the circus...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
If this idea becomes a reality, then that skript kiddie was just a visionary! Imagine the aftermath of an Internet worm that sent the 'copyright self destruct' message to a computer a week or so after infecting it (hopefully infected many other computers in the interm). It would make CodeRed look like a pleasant dream.
those annoying documents called the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
It's been a long time for this Baby-Boomer since I studied them in high school, but the phrases Innocent until proven guilty, unreasonable search and seizure, and due process of law seem to ring a bell.
Incidentally, how are they going to verify the location of the individual? Despite the US governments wishes, only a small part of the planet is under their direct control and, ergo, their laws. Dubious legality of destruction not withstanding, they sure as hell have NO rights to destroy someones system in Sweden or wherever.
Plus, one would HOPE you get a warning before they nuke your system.
Wonder if Dell is behind this plan?;)
From:
Senator Hatch married the former Elaine Hansen of Newton, Utah. They are the proud parents of six children and have twenty grandchildren.
I wonder how many of his kids' and grandkids' PC's would be wrecked?
Wouldn't a public incitement to damage private property be considered terrorism under the PATRIOT act? At a minimum it is irresponsible.
Organization: alphabetical, sometimes numerical or messy
I have been increasingly concerned about the contingent of Hollywood Democrats who have sought to cripple, extort, and otherwise destroy the progress of technology in the name of defending copyright holders from distribution of their works online. I've found especially disturbing the idea that is is valid for the government to hold due process hostage in order to force the technology community to solve the content industry's distribution problems by developing and implementing technical means to protect their work - by threatening to allow private organizations to maliciously attack computer systems alleged to be used to distribute protected works without the legal benefits accorded under criminal and civil law. This is an especially outrageous abandonment of the principles on which our government is supposed to stand.
I thought I could look to the Republican party to serve as a balance against this senseless legislative paranoia with regard to technology, but it seems that this is not the case. Although I am not a resident in your state, your words on this issue have caused me to reconsider ever supporting anyone from your party for elected office.
send your comments to: senator@hatch.senate.gov
"nuke your system." /. surfing session? It's not like a spike is driven through your HD.
You back up your data, your config, your bookmarks, you have your favorite distro on hand, etc..., etc..., regularly, right?
What could possibly be done in to your system that couldn't be ameliorated in the time it takes for an average
Erm... Remember the CIH virus that nuked your CMOS, and in many cases the outcome was requiring a new motherboard? You can backup all you like. Without your MOBO you ain't goin' nowhere...
Your anology is good. I will now stretch it to the point of being silly.
There are studies-- ones i can't remember the names of or links to, of course-- that show that spanking a child makes that child more likely to grow up to be a violent person. If I remember right, the claim was that people who had corporal punishment used on them as a child were more likely to grow up to be the kind of person who beat their wives or children.
The reason given for this, again if i remember right, was that by having violence used on them at such a sensitive age, the child grows up thinking violence is "normal", and application of violence is how you are expected to solve problems, and beating someone is an acceptable and normal way for one human to get another human to comply with a request.
So, here's my thought: what happens if the RIAA hacking and screwing up your computer if you've been filetrading becomes common? What happens to the children/teenagers who grow up under this kind of paradigm, and grow up seeing that the RIAA, this big important adult business thing that funds congressional campaigns and everything, reacts to people doing things it things are wrong by tracking them down and breaking their stuff?
If it works like spanking does, well, we may well wind up with a generation growing up thinking vigilante justice is normal. Or maybe growing up with a kind of "us vs them" mentality toward corporations; that corporations are some kind of big distant enemies who can do anything they like without the law applying. And you can't tell a kid that someone big is allowed to hit you and you can't hit back and have them believe you. They might wind up growing up thinking that terrorism by corporations against citizens, and terrorism against corporations by citizens, is normal, and the law considers such things acceptable enough they don't regulate them.. as long as one is doing the other doesn't like...
This is stretching, and of course, none of this will ever come to pass. But, just a thought.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Has Hatch changed sides so dramatically?
Ah, but don't forget, from the AP article it mentions that Senator Hatch earned $18,000 last year alone for music royalties! So he's coming from a different perspective than us music consumers, because he's a music composer too (or was).
This is ridiculous. Wilful destruction of property is AGAINST THE LAW! Let's look at this another way. He's effectively saying that if you download copyrighted material, someone can be sent by the company that owns it to break both your legs.
I have a question for the Senator from Utah. Under the recently passed Patriot Act distruction of a computer system is considered an act of terrorism. Does the senators recent comments mean he is now supporting act of terrorism?
Another day closer to redwood heaven
I did, and I encourage everyone to do the same, so I will post my message to him:
.
Dear Senator Hatch,
You sir, are a moron. Your arrogant, short-sighted, blatantly illegal ideas on Copyright protection are utterly offensive. Perhaps copyright infringement is *wrong* and illegal, but your proposed methods of combatting these *offenses* are so incredibly inane I must question how you became a senator. Do you have any comprehension of the measures in place to protect privacy, are those laws merely temporary?
It is truly amazing to me that you could support protecting intellectual property rights to such a degree that you would endorse destroying what is tangible, not to mention expensive property. I am truly worried for this country if law enforcement can now be put in the hands of everyone, and no legal recourse will be pursued. I equate the endorsement of this act to endorsing cutting off the hand of one who shoplifts, but of course that would be absurd. .
You disgust me.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
-Thomas Paine
What the Senator is suggesting is that a purported copyright holder be allowed to destroy property of another with no trial. This is un-American.
First, an Article 3 created court needs to determine guilt or innocence. Second, destruction of property as a punishment appears nowhere in the penal code [hehe, hehe, he said "penal"]. Last time I checked, we didn't cut off hands, either.
If I am a farmer and I think you may have stolen corn from my field as you drove by, could I destroy your refridgerator?
Hatch has no concept of technology or the dynamic of the problem he seeks to address. Thus, he speaks as one insane.
"I'd do away with the pixies if you could give me something more." Ben Lee
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
and how long do you suppose till some kid with a grudge sets up a completely obscure OS, sets up a honey pot just begging to get nuked by this new technology, captures the packets, decyphers it, and takes down anyone he has a grudge with?
what if he has a politial agenda against your country?
these guys are soooo "smrt", i can tell!
In Canada, we are paying a tarif on every blank cd sold to the record industry whether we use it for data back-up or pirating. Many people figure that if they're paying a tax on music downloads then they have a right to download music. I wonder how they would feel if they're systems are attacked for doing something that they were forced to pay for? Do International copyright laws allow for the US government to attack people all over the world? How would the attcker be 100% sure of his/her target?
This sounds scary. But it does have legal precedence, of sorts.
I was recently warned that in Los Angeles county, if you're caught racing (by the judgement of the arresting officer), your vehicle is forfeit to the county.
In Florida, any vehicle involved in any drug violation may be forfeit to the state. Of course, the state is in it for the money, so they'll be nice enough to sell you your own vehicle back. A friend of mine paid over $5,000 to get her own car back over a minor violation. It took over a month to get things arranged, and several trips to that city. She had only been passing through the town, she wasn't a resident.
One particular sheriff's department has some of my handguns still, which I'm particuarly upset about. My ex-wife was getting violent, so I gave a friend everything dangerous from the house. She locked them all away in the trunk of her car. A couple days later, she was pulled over on suspicion of DUI. She wasn't arrested for DUI, but because she was pulled over on suspicion, they seized the weapons. It did absolutely no good to try to explain it to anyone. And yes, they were all perfectly legal. The begging to get my stuff back ended when they finally came up with the standpoint of "we don't know where they are." They just disappeared out of the system. {cough}{cough}. Ya into someone's personal collection, I'm sure.
The gov't is already seizing property without due processes or reasonable cause. I doubt they'll get the law through saying you can hack, but I'd bet they'll pass laws saying any equipment used in the act of the crime (the crime being music piracy) can be seized. I'm sure it'll be broad enough to include just about anything in house/apartment.
As for just killing machines on demand, I'd bet Microsoft will include that in future releases of Windows very willingly. It would terrify me to know that they could just pick and choose machines to zap.
If I was Joe-ISP hosting on Windows machines (ok, that would never happen), and one site had MP3's on it, they could not only destroy that site, but every site hosted there? They could cause damage to the machine itself (i.e., wipe the BIOS, drop the partition table, etc). I'd be afraid to think what would happen with a single BIOS change to bump the voltage up to the CPU and watch it fry. What would 12v do to a low voltage CPU line? Now what if that hosting machine happened to be a big expensive hosting machine? I've seen pricetags over $40k come by. It wouldn't be very good to see one of those go up in smoke.
I'd be just as upset if my kid had friends over, and they were downloading files and got *MY* machine destroyed. I'm not exactly going to be satisfied with "The RIAA destroyed your computer because someone was downloading Enimen's new album. They're legally protected in this action." Well, I'd probably be more upset as this would be my own machine. Customers can live with a server down for a day or two (but they won't like it). My personal property is *MINE*.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
from the TV/Movies/Music industry? I didn't think so......
First he brings us the DMCA and now this....
Can you imagine what a virus writer could do once this technology got into the wild ? Imagine a virus that could would wipe out all those PCs, or maybe a select set of IPs ... scary ... hmmm ... wonder what the IP addresses of the RIAA are ?
Bitter and proud of it.
The old DRM Lobby has been trying a bit too hard. Some old folks in congress have got such a huge misunderstanding of how the machines that power our lives work it's incredible.
BTW, according to netcraft http://www.hatchmusic.com/ is running Apache on Linux.
That means Linus, as well as most other programmers who have worked on Linux or Apache would be able to remotely destroy his site. Bill Gates would be able to destroy 90% of the computers in existence.
I suppose this law would quickly be followed by a law making it illegal to block the port they pick. Or maybe they will just talk to your ISP, go to your house and take your computer. They can cut them up with axes in the street like the old prohibition days. I bet Hatch can remember those days himself. :)
This could be rich. On Orrin Hatch's website he is using the Milonic DHTML menu script quite possibly in violation of copyright and terms of use. Milonic's conditions of use is explicit and includes a requisite link back if not paid for. Guess what kids, no link and in the coders comments is this line: /* i am the license for the menu (duh) */. Within mmenu_license.js there is no indication that this is a paid for version with only the standard language found. Same thing is true for the actual DHTML script, mmenu.js.
It would be quite embarrassing for the good Senaturd from Utah if it was actually found that he himself was a copyright violator, ripping off the hard work of Milonic Solutions Ltd., with all such made public in light of his recent comments. What choice would he have but to rig his own computers and pompous ass for detonation.
I assume then that you propose outlawing private contributions as well. Otherwise you'd just be shifting the financing from the company to it's owners, who are real people, and who are making such contributions for their personal benefit, be it through the company or otherwise.
Then there's the question of why individuals should be allowed to buy politcal influence if companies are not. Or who would fund politics if it weren't for individual or corporate contributions. I'm all for a low-budget election, but low-budget to the point of people not knowing the candidates doesn't help anyone.
In short, you've got a great idealistic statement. Wonderful. Come back when you've got a suggestion for improvement, rather than just a complaint.