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Senator Orrin Hatch a Pirate?
Stigmata669 writes "Remember a few days ago when Senator Orrin Hatch decided that software piracy was punishable by destruction of computers? Well a bored and unemployed Sys. Admin in Houston smelled a rat when he was rooting through Hatch's website source. As it turns out Sen. Hatch is a common software pirate himself."
I register all my shareware, or uninstall it before the stated evaluation period ends. If you do otherwise, shame.
I do not install unlicensed software in production environments. My personal computer is different, but I still conform to the license requirements or remove the software.
You're talking to sysadmins here -- you'll find relatively few pirates in the bunch. You might rethink your accusations in light of your audience.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
If someone actually destroyed the server hosting his website, he'd be the first person lining up to put them in jail. Come on, Hatch, of all the things to take a ridiculous stand on; copyrights? Is $18,000/yr really that important to you?
I'd like to see how Hatch's constituents react when they find out he's the one who authored the law that let the music company destroy their computer because little Johnny wanted to hear the latest trendy music hit.
And yes, I understand that no such bill would ever make it anywhere, but for a high-ranking Senator to even suggest such an idea is absolutely unforgiveable. There's no excuse for violating imaginary property rights, but there is an excuse for willfully destroying the physical property of someone? I don't know whether he's really serious about such an idea, but assuming for a moment that there's a bit of sanity left in his noggin, I think he needs to choose his words more wisely. The fact is, this simply cannot work out well for him, and will only provide fuel for his critics and those who would like to take his seat.
Quite frankly, the man has no concept of what he's talking about, and needs to sit down, shut up, and listen to what others have to say for a change.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Go to Sen. Hatch's web site and click on the "MyUtahSearch.com" graphic on the right hand side of the page. It redirects you to a [not safe for work] pr0n site.
[Thanks to The Turd Report for pointing this out on K5.]
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
He may not be at fault but as the 'leader' of his political presence, he is responsible. And since he is advocating vigilante 'justice' and seems to be will to throw out 'innocent until proven guilty' he of all people deserve the stiffest penalty. I'll tell you if that bill passes I bet you more than a new DMCA complaints are gonna be leveling against the govt. And those licenses that allow free personal and govt. use? Well they wont allow free govt. use anymore.
Nominate him for DU's Top Ten Conservative Idiots! (Go to the bottom of the page for nominating instructions)
Ah but since this is software piracy the entire organization is responsible. As the head of his office Sen. Hatch is ultimately responsible for any piracy that goes on in his organization.
Anyway go here http://www.bsa.org/usa/report/ and report Orrin for piracy.
I was somewhat involved with Napster back in its heyday. I once visited their office, and was introduced to a new employee who came straight out of Orrin Hatch's office. He used to be an assistant of some sort to Hatch, and was clearly hired by Napster because he could serve as a lobbyist of sorts with some very direct Washington contacts. The funny thing is, as soon as they hired this guy, Hatch came out in strong support of Napster and defended them for a time.
I was amazed, but not surprised. That's not the sort of position one would have expected from the likes of Orrin Hatch, but clearly is ex-assistant was having significant influence on him in Napster's favor. How ironic, yet also unsurprising, that in the wake of Napster's demise, Hatch has pretty much gone 180 degrees from his previous stance.
Senator Hatch is, overall, a great guy. The other congressmen from Utah (except for Jim Matheson, a moderate Democrat who managed to barely hold on to his House seat despite the careful gerrymandering of our terrible State Legislature) vote harder-than-hard-line Republican, often seemingly without any thought. Hatch has genuinely tried to investigate the issues and work towards solutions- even though the solutions he engineers get fairly widely booed in Utah since they may deviate from the Party Line. In just about all previous instances when I have disagreed with Sen. Hatch's views, I have nevertheless felt them to be well-reasoned and somewhat justified.
This time around constitutes an exception. Everybody makes stupid mistakes once in a while, and I hope Hatch manages to pull a course correction on this issue pretty soon.
ROCK THE VOTE!
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Does everyone remember all the congresscritters out on the steps singing God Bless America? That had an audience of over a billion but did they pay the royalties to the Boy & Girl Scouts? I bet they didn't even check out the copyright before they decided it was a good idea. But it means they all broke copyright law.
If anyone gets to talk to a Senator, this is a very good thing to bring up. According to standard copyright rates, they all owe more in royalties than most of them will ever see and some of these guys play with the national debt.
Politicians better fix the economy and end the tech-visa programs before more bored and unemployed techies turn up more dirt on them.
You know what they say: An idle IT person will hack into the devil's workshop.
Table-ized A.I.
This time around constitutes an exception. Everybody makes stupid mistakes once in a while, and I hope Hatch manages to pull a course correction on this issue pretty soon.
No, this time does not constitute an exception. Orrin was also the sponsor of another misguided piece of legislation that maybe you've heard of, the DMCA.
Orrin has taken over 175K so far just this year from the TV/Movies/Music lobby
Orrin is one of the WORST congressmen this country has EVER had. Bought off like every other congressman but he apparently is not only paid off but stupid about the legislation that he introduces.
Now jensend, as a constituent I suggest that you get informed on these issues that your idiot congressman makes the rest of the country suffer for.
What ever happens when someone at a record label royally screws up and fries the hard drive of someone with legiminate copies of MP3's
/ 20030617/ap_on_hi_te/downloading_music
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap
" The senator, a composer who earned $18,000 last year in song writing royalties, acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers"
Apparently nothing. It will really suck when your new $60,000 Sun Server gets hosed because someone put a copy of the latest backstreet boys music on it.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Where does SCO, Novell, Center 7 and the Canopy Group live and work and have their being? Utah!
The Canopy Group, a Utah firm with investments in dozens of companies owns the controlling interest in SCO. That's right, SCO.
Do you consider Hatch's proclamation coincidental to the Copyright issues Canopy has brought up against IBM and Linux as SCO's alter ego? This is a classic special interest lobby created to move public interest in a daring direction.
This senator has some interesting harmonics in his small world.
Historically, incumbents in the US Senate rarely lose an election, regardless of what they do.
A special investigator found evidence proving Senator Robert Packwood of Oregon in violation of campaign finance. The investigation yielded a scandal as Packwood's address book yielded names and address of his many mistresses.
Still, he resigned. No one voted him out.
The power base of a US Senator self perpetuates. During elections, they will be working on a major initiative or project. They will head a major committee. The voters will not vote them out. The state could be conservative and the Senator a liberal and he'll still win.
Senator Hatch has a self perpetuating power base and a very loyal constituency in a state where religion rules.
He's like the basketball player Karl Malone, he'll never retire.
Here's the danger: This guy has the ability to influence state, federal and local legislation.
And he is not demonstrated support for open source.
In our world, he's a butt-head. In the world of the uninformed, he's as right as right can be.
Utah politics is not more complacent or different than any other state.
It is however the power base of software firms and big, big dollars that are not our friends.
According to this software piracy information PDF made by the BSA in paragraph 4, the US Senate is liable for this unlicensed software:
"Many businesses, both large and small, face serious legal risks because
of software piracy. Under the law, a company can be held liable
for its employeesâ(TM) actions. If an employee is installing unauthorized
software copies on company computers or acquiring illegal software
through the Internet, the company can be sued for copyright
infringement. This is true even if the companyâ(TM)s management was
unaware of the employeeâ(TM)s actions."
-Valen
We do have term limits, they are called elections. Use your vote to elect them out of office. Better yet, use your voice and get fellow members of the electorate to help you in this.
Term limits would hurt politicians that are good as well as those that are scum.
That is the beauty of a democratic system. We get the opportunity to throw out the crummy tyrants and try to elect good tyrants.
and has blessing from the Church.
:-)
Some other posters have claimed that this power is actually pretty trivial. Let me make this as abundantly clear as I possibly can.
WRONG.
I have witnessed personally that simply being Mormon gives you opportunities that one should clearly not have the right to. I recently saw every single hiring rule of the _corporation_ I work for, broken, to hire someone massively underqualified for a UNIX (not Linux) admin position. I had to show this guy how to use the 'ls' and 'cd' commands AFTER he was given this position. He also did not interview for this position. How can this happen you ask?
CEO of corporation needs blessing of several committees that Hatch sits on, hence, a huge percentage of uppers in this company, just magically happen to be mormon, including the VP 3 levels above the person in question, who bypassed all of the HR rules and regulations, elected not to make underqualifed person submit to a standard interview, and gave them the job.
Yes, it's discrimiation. there are labor laws against this. And there is a huge law on the books, that prevents Orrin Hatch from playing religious favorites legally. Little thing called the the First Amendment.
To anyone who lives in UT, vote this small minded bastard out of office, NOW. Get his paid-off ass back into the 'Temple' where it belongs. Preachers have no business in politics.
Yes, I'm posting this anonymously for obvious reason, I actually have excellent Karma, go figure.
Fine, but that, IMO, is directly analogous to the idea of destroying a computer because it has been used for piracy. Consider the modern computing environment where multiple users may (and do) use one machine for a variety of purposes. Tell me, should all users of the machine suffer if one of them downloads music illegally? If all users on that one machine may be legally targetted because of the actions of one user on the same machine (which is basically Hatch's position) then surely he should be held accountable for someone else's work on his Web site. I mean, it's his site, not mine, not yours and certainly not his Webmaster's.
This only goes to show further how out-of-touch and un-informed Hatch really is about computers. He should be making no laws governing their usage until he can build his own fucking web site.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Also, he seems to comply with the terms of the license in the source code of the page. Moreover, any asshole that spends a few hours writing JavaScript code and enforcing a half-baked license to ruin someone's political career (for publicities' sake probably) should get a swift kick in the ass.
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I just got done writing him a letter and submitting it through his site.
Here it is:
Dear Sir,
Having read your recent proposition that copyright holders be able to "destroy" the computers of those who download their works without permission I am frankly appalled. I understand that as a copyright holder yourself this might be a hot topic for you but please do not let your emotions overcome common sense.
As a profesional Systems Administrator, I understand the problem of unlicenced downloading. It is a plauge on the bandwith of the systems I administer. However, your proposed solution is one of the worst I have ever heard suggested. Copyright does not take precedence over private property laws. Second this would cause untold financial damage to buisnesses, educational institutions, and government agencies who's machiens were used by employees to download music. In the case of medical, or military computers it could even cause loss of life.
Since your website was recently discovered to be running unlicenced software this campaign of yours is rather hypocritical.
I strongly suggest that you drop this idea immediatly as unrealistic. I suggest instead that you pursue reducing the length of copyrights and/or making it much easier for material to go into the public domain. This would allow for a much greater amount of material to be LEGALLY downloaded. People prefer to do the right and honest thing, as well as avoid possible crimes and their consequences. If they have more legal options for downloads many will choose the legal choice rather than the immoral one - thus allowing artists seeking to make a just profit from their recent works, while fulfilling the original intent of copyright - to provide a limited short term monopoly on creative works as an incentive for more material to be released and the public domain be nurtured.
Respectfully,
-name ommited from slashdot-
Naw, just prevent candidates from running more than two *consecutive* terms. If they're really popular they can switch between the senate and the house, but otherwise it would serve to shake things up without depriving us of experience. It worked for the Romans for hundreds of years; and it wasn't a failure of this system that led to the fall of the Republic.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.