You download a copyright protected file ? Zap … your computer is dead … at least that is what the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee wants.
» « I’m interested, » Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone’s computer « may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights. »
From here, you have to know that law enforcement agency cannot take such actions under the laws of the USA… so the only solution is to let the copyright owner do such dirty work and to exempt them from all anti-hacking legislation currently on the book.
I don’t know about you, but would you even propose to destroy the car of someone suspected … not even convicted… of drunk driving. Maybe some police officer would realise their fantasy.
And let’s not start talking about due process of law and letting private groups enforce public legislation.
Other pointers:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26462
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1154
Wasn’t it already said that allowing copyright owners going into people’s computers to extract the alleged illegal copy of the protected material was unacceptable? Now we are pushing even further!?! There is no end to this 🙁
As far as I know, all the harvesting of (probably) infringing material was done by receiving a list that the host freely and knowingly (my mother’s installation of LimeWire nonwhitstanding) shared. Or is there a precendent for « going into »?
EFF responds to Hatch on computer destruction:http://www.eff.org/news/breaking/archives/2003_06.php#000289
For Solving the Problem of Theft of Copyrighted Works, Orrin Hatch Suggests…
http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/biplog/archive/000920.html
Violate copyright, lose your eyes: http://algorhythm.org/archives/2003/06/18/violate_copyright_lose_your_eyes.html
Orrin Hatch: clueless and malevolent: http://algorhythm.org/archives/2003/06/17/orrin_hatch_clueless_and_malevolent.html
Digital Frights Managment: http://bgbg.blogspot.com/2003_06_15_bgbg_archive.html#200436002
As follow-up to this story, here is a quote from /.
» 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. »
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/06/20/0046237.shtml?tid=103&tid=185&tid=99
Also a link to the same story on wired news:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305,00.html
Gotta love those un-employed sys-admin !
He was also linking to a porn site. http://boingboing.net/2003_06_01_archive.html#200440709
Most likely a case of an expired domain being pointed at a link farm, yet it shows the perils of his holier than thou, take no prisonners, a slegdehammer is a fine tool if I can’t be bothered to invent a fly swatter, approach.