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

Wed Jul 24 18:10:00 UTC 2002

Would malicious actions on the part of copyright holders violate the
AUP of most networks?  Or are service providers more willing to tolerate
denial of service attacks by large corporations than say, spam?

If this legislation is passed, they certainly will earn Null0 on mine.

Regards, 
James Thomason

On Wed, 24 Jul 2002, Marshall Eubanks wrote:

> 
> 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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> ----- End forwarded message -----
> 
> -- 
>                                   Regards
>                                   Marshall Eubanks
> 
> 
> 
> T.M. Eubanks
> Multicast Technologies, Inc
> 10301 Democracy Lane, Suite 410
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