Powerful Senator Endorses Destroying Computers of Illegal Downloaders (Orrin Hatch)

AP ^ | 6/17/03 | Ted Bridis

[Jean S]

WASHINGTON (AP) - The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.

The surprise remarks by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, during a hearing on copyright abuses represent a dramatic escalation in the frustrating battle by industry executives and lawmakers in Washington against illegal music downloads.

During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws.

"No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer," replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can't.

"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."

The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."

"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.

"There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch said.

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who has been active in copyright debates in Washington, urged Hatch to reconsider. Boucher described Hatch's role as chairman of the Judiciary Committee as "a very important position, so when Senator Hatch indicates his views with regard to a particular subject, we all take those views very seriously."

Some legal experts suggested Hatch's provocative remarks were more likely intended to compel technology and music executives to work faster toward ways to protect copyrights online than to signal forthcoming legislation.

"It's just the frustration of those who are looking at enforcing laws that are proving very hard to enforce," said Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department cybercrimes prosecutor and associate professor at George Washington University law school.

The entertainment industry has gradually escalated its fight against Internet file-traders, targeting the most egregious pirates with civil lawsuits. The Recording Industry Association of America recently won a federal court decision making it significantly easier to identify and track consumers - even those hiding behind aliases - using popular Internet file-sharing software.

Kerr predicted it was "extremely unlikely" for Congress to approve a hacking exemption for copyright owners, partly because of risks of collateral damage when innocent users might be wrongly targeted.

"It wouldn't work," Kerr said. "There's no way of limiting the damage."

Last year, Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., ignited a firestorm across the Internet over a proposal to give the entertainment industry new powers to disrupt downloads of pirated music and movies. It would have lifted civil and criminal penalties against entertainment companies for disabling, diverting or blocking the trading of pirated songs and movies on the Internet.

But Berman, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary panel on the Internet and intellectual property, always has maintained that his proposal wouldn't permit hacker-style attacks by the industry on Internet users.

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On the Net: Sen. Hatch: http://hatch.senate.gov

AP-ES-06-17-03 1716EDT

[Jason_b]

What is the name of the journalist who always calls the Republicans the Stupid Party? I always saw his articles in the Conservative Chronicles.

[Dimensio]

Wow. If Linux could run .exe binaries natively or I were stupid enough to run a Windows file of that nature via wine with root privledges, I might possibly be concerned if not for the fact that I always load MP3 files through the file-loader of my MP3 player rather than double-clicking the filename in a file manager window.

Hatch is a crank who is clearly completely out of touch with reality. His suggestion is something that I would only expect to see in a satirical publication.

[Cachelot]

That will screw up a computer, especially one with an old mother board (more than a year or two old) where the BIOS chip is hard to find or unreasonably expensive

Yep. And you can lump almost all laptops in there, even the newer ones.

Thing about malware, you can never be sure where it hits - it's not very targettable, even the fancy stuff that has been brewing in military backrooms :). And these critters sound like morons. So wait for the music industry to be hit with a few juicy lawsuits if they try this. To give you just one scenario:

"We were hit with a virus which as a payload had a download of a file from kaazaa. This file happened to be infected with a trojan put out by music company xxx. The trojan then proceeded to wipe out five years worth of cancer research data, taking care to first destroy any backups. Basically, we want all of xxx's assets - and all their executives as experimental specimens".

And then you have all the really malevolent folks who will see this is a thrown down glove. Interesting times ahead.

[Centurion2000]

Your choice, violate or not. And without your working computer, how would YOU prove the "government" did it?

Ever heard of Firewall logs and disk mirroring ?

[HiTech RedNeck]

Oh they'll be sue proof. His Hatchness will see to that.

[MississippiMan]

Good grief, has Hatch gone senile on us? What happens when the Acme Remote Destruction software makes a mistake and wipes out some innocent guy's business records for the past ten years?

MM

[Arkinsaw]

How did the movie and music industries survived the wholesale bootlegging?

I've had the opportunity to purchase bootleg stuff. I never have because they were packaged like crap with low quality material and of generally poor quality.

If the entertainment industry were smart they would find a way to further differentiate their product from the bootleg products. They have to find a way to add value beyond the digital information itself.

They could provide premium items with the product that bootleggers could not provide. They could provide access to pre-release stuff that bootleggers could not provide. They could provide access to chats or special events online to legitimate users. I am sure that SOMEBODY in LA has a little creativity (well maybe not).

They have created an environment where it is COOL to download MP3 bootlegs and UNCOOL to purchase the real product. Kids today think of the music establishment as just that "the establishment". Its COOL to screw the old sourpuss, greedy, record execs and UNCOOL to buy from them. How smart is it for them to continue to play into that image by foaming at the mouth, suing, and screeching about their potential customers?

The problem of course is that such things are more costly than just churning out a million cheap CD's, selling them at a huge profit margin, and hiring lawyers. Such things actually require the music industry to establish a relationship with their customers and requires them to know who their customers are and what they want. Too expensive...too much trouble.....at least till they go out of business.

[Michael Barnes]

re #64

I guess my backups won't do any good huh Orrin?

Anyone who runs apps with rights at a level that could wipe out a system is a friggen idiot in the first place.

[Da Mav]

This sounds like something from Waxman on LSD.

Take a moment to write Hatch and tell him the loonies are supposed to be the Democrats. I picked the "private property" section of his email choices.

[PeoplesRep_of_LA]

Sean Hannity is an embarrassing ideologue. He ain't the sharpest crayon in the box, either. It angers me that Comes is the more intelligent of the two, even though he's usually dead wrong.

Wow!

I felt alone in the wildness at my falling out with "Captain Ad-Hominem" great to hear you say that. Stop me if you've heard this before "17 resolutions, 12 years...yada yada" I mean, he doesn't listen to his opponent, can't adapt his arguement, and simply restates the same things he thinks are indisputable OVER AND OVER. He is an embarrassment! I'm a staunch conservative, and Republican, and I still think objectively that he loses arguements by being an il informed incompetent. I stopped listening to him, now I listen to Micheal Medved. The contrast between the two's intellect and ability to illustrate conservatism is astounding.

[Arkinsaw]

If they would drop the price of music CDs to about $6 each, they would put an end to online swapping. They just don't get it, do they?

They have a fundamental ignorance of supply and demand curves thats for sure.

In addition, the CD format is so inflexible. There are many times a band has a one hit album. I don't want to pay $15 for that song and have to listen to the filler on the album. I will never buy the one song since it is unavailable at a reasonable price.

When Apple iTunes pitched their concept the record execs were all freaked out saying that they were afraid that the customer would only buy the one hit rather than the whole album (of course this turned out to be completely untrue). My question was....what about singles? The record execs used to make a mint out of singles to early teens. What the heck is wrong with selling one song? Nothing. They can't even learn from their OWN history. They were frightened by something that had proven profitable in the past. This more than anything proved to me that they are morons who are afraid of ANY change.

[pointsal]

Boy, he's wacko.... maybe he should consult with old "smooth-hair" Lott and take a well-deserved POWDER....

[HiTech RedNeck]

He has done the improbable alright, make the Rats look like the people with level heads.

[dixiechick2000]

"The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet."

This will P.O. my 78 year old mother-in-law.

If I were he, I wouldn't mess with her or her music.

She's from Texas...

[wizzler]

I'm against Hatch's position, but you're making a flawed analogy.

What the public library engages in is not copyright infringement. What downloaders engage in is.

[FairOpinion]

Interesting.
I can see it is a real problem, but all the bright people out there should still be able to come up something other than destroying people's computers. If it is so decentralized, how would the music companies even be sure who is downloading the illegal stuff?

[adam_az]

I can see it is a real problem, but all the bright people out there should still be able to come up something other than destroying people's computers. If it is so decentralized, how would the music companies even be sure who is downloading the illegal stuff?

They write a special client program that acts on the network similarly to how the program a downloader uses would, but is automated to connect to other computers in the peer to peer network and search for specific files.

Because the protocol is known and open, as long as it plays by the rules, you don't have any way to know that they are probing you. (of course, you have to be running a program that connects you to the p2p net, they can't just examine the contents of your hard disk over the internet. well, there are ways to do that too, but that's not what we are talking about here ;) )

[NeoCaveman]

Coming soon: The Hatch-Kennedy kill your Computer Act.

I can hardly wait, (/sarcasm)

[bigfootbob]

"Between crap like this and the $400 welfare checks to non-taxpayers they had to push through, they won't be running things for long."

Orrin needs to be retired. He could move to Nashville and bee uh country sanger, or Branson and be a giggolo.

[plain talk]

How could 'like' Orrin Hatch and why would you bother writing to this idiot?