Draft of Rep. Berman's bill authorizes anti-P2P hacking

Wed Jul 24 16:40:51 UTC 2002

Thought this would be considered on-topic as guess who would have
to clean up the resulting messes...

Regards
Marshall Eubanks

----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com> -----

From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
Subject: FC: Draft of Rep. Berman's bill authorizes anti-P2P hacking
To: politech at politechbot.com
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 20:29:35 -0400
X-URL: http://www.mccullagh.org/
X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-945923.html?tag=politech

    Could Hollywood hack your PC?
    By Declan McCullagh
    July 23, 2002, 4:45 PM PT

    WASHINGTON--Congress is about to consider an entertainment
    industry proposal that would authorize copyright holders to disable
    PCs used for illicit file trading.

    A draft bill seen by CNET News.com marks the boldest political effort
    to date by record labels and movie studios to disrupt peer-to-peer
    networks that they view as an increasingly dire threat to their bottom
    line.

    Sponsored by Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Howard Coble, R-N.C.,
    the measure would permit copyright holders to perform nearly unchecked
    electronic hacking if they have a "reasonable basis" to believe that
    piracy is taking place. Berman and Coble plan to introduce the 10-page
    bill this week.

    The legislation would immunize groups such as the Motion Picture
    Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of
    America from all state and federal laws if they disable, block or
    otherwise impair a "publicly accessible peer-to-peer network."

    Anyone whose computer was damaged in the process must receive the
    permission of the U.S. attorney general before filing a lawsuit, and a
    suit could be filed only if the actual monetary loss was more than
    $250.

    According to the draft, the attorney general must be given complete
    details about the "specific technologies the copyright holder intends
    to use to impair" the normal operation of the peer-to-peer network.
    Those details would remain secret and would not be divulged to the
    public.

    The draft bill doesn't specify what techniques, such as viruses,
    worms, denial-of-service attacks, or domain name hijacking, would be
    permissible. It does say that a copyright-hacker should not delete
    files, but it limits the right of anyone subject to an intrusion to
    sue if files are accidentally erased.

    [...]

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-- 
                                  Regards
                                  Marshall Eubanks

T.M. Eubanks
Multicast Technologies, Inc
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