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

AP ^ | 6/17/03 | Ted Bridis

[Dog Gone]

I've heard rumors that Hatch is a retard, but I refused to believe them.

Okay, now I'm convinced.

[tracer]

Enjoy your shackles, Citizen.....

[Pearls Before Swine]

RE computer destroying viruses:

There are a few BIOS viruses which re-program the system BIOS to junk. 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.

Forgetting about the political firestorm for the moment, there are technical ways around it. For one thing, Giga-byte touts its "Dual BIOS" technology -- they have two BIOS chips on the board, and if one gets fouled up, the other one takes over, and you can do a backup flash to get them both straightened out. I think other manufacturers would quickly come up with equivalent schemes, such as flash from disk to recover a trashed BIOS.

[rs79bm]

Either way...They print those things for pennies.

In large quantities such as the amount they print, yes. Small, garage bands, however, pay quite a price to have their CD's printed. Even then, they never charge over 10 bucks for 'em. As I said earlier, the RIAA erred in thinking that people will willingly pay 60 bucks to pick up a few CD's of their favorite artists. IMO, they're simply greedy.

[Arkinsaw]

Luckily, we have special protections built into Krusgnet to protect against this kind of skullduggery.

I was dowloading some photos of dairy solids and arctic mammals from Krusgnet the other night and my computer suddenly had a host around it.

[Petronski]

Would you care to clarify your remarks?

I'd be happy to clarify. It is hilarious in a "three stooges / wiley coyote / bugs bunny" kind of way.

[tracer]

Hey, man, what's your hourly rate. I'll pay in cash, if you wish... 8~)

[adam_az]

ORRIN HAT© H
...LIKE GASOLINE AND A MATCH

[Kevin Curry]

Hatch is, in my view, one of the sorriest of creatures that make up a subset of my co-religionists, in that he is the prototypical Utah Mormon Weenie of the Mitt Romney genre -- not to be confused with other members of the "Mormon" Church residing in Utah and around the world who simply are living their lives in accordance with the Gospel.

Quite seriously, how does he manage to get reelected? Why do the voting Utahns that you know continue to send him back to Washington to bloat the federal government and complicate our lives?

Is he politically invulnerable in the Beehive State?

[nravoter]

Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading.

Let's see that film about blinding techniques, and then have some lunch.

Real Genius

[FairOpinion]

I like Orrin Hatch. BUT I think he is very wrong on this issue. There are a lot of things they can do, they could make the download not play, unless you enter an ID number, just as when you buy computer software, you can't install it, unless you enter a number, even in shareware, which you can use for 30 days, they can deactivate it after 30 days, there are a lot of simple things they could do to make it harder to enjoy the illegally downloaded music.

Remotely destroying the computer of someone, for this, is something that shouldn't even be considered. That would be like the music companies being prosecutor, judge, jury & executioner. Not to mention their employees doing it to someone just for fun, even if a person didn't download anything illegal. Or some kid plays with Dad's computer, so they destroy all the important data on the guy's computer, and so on. But as I said, even for those who do download music illegally, destroying their computer, with the loss of data, the expense, just by some company, who had immunity from this, is totally crazy.

I will certainly write to him and strongly suggest he think it over and revoke his remarks.

[Arkinsaw]

It works for me. If you don't want to lose your computer, obey the law.

Sure, don't interfere with the legal operation of an abortion clinic by posting photos or other hate speech that might cause emotional upset to clinic patrons. I am sure that they can find something in the tens of thousands of laws to destroy your computer for.

[FreePaul]

Old Orrin's pockets must be bulging with the money he got from the alleged music industry.

[wizzler]

I'm with Jhoffa.

Illicit downloading and copyright infringement suck because they violate an individual's property.

"Destroying" an individual's computer without due process sucks because it violates an individual's property.

[dark_lord]

And of course the fact that most MP3's are downloaded onto university computers by college students, or onto company computers in the evening hours by young employees (because corporations and universities have that nice high speed Internet access) means nothing to this old dinosaur. So the computer that would get smoked would not even be owned by the downloader!

Some folks on this thread have mentioned this would be like crushing someones car because they are caught speeding. In reality it would be like crushing the car that a car thief stole.

[Alberta's Child]

What Hatch is really saying here is that the laws against copywright infractions are so useless that the music industry can't even rely on the government to enforce them. In fact, the music industry is up against what eventually brought the Iron Curtain crashing to the ground -- when the sheer number of people who violate a law is so large that the criminal justice system can't even handle the load and society simply functions as if the law doesn't even exist.

[adam_az]

I like Orrin Hatch. BUT I think he is very wrong on this issue. There are a lot of things they can do, they could make the download not play, unless you enter an ID number, just as when you buy computer software, you can't install it, unless you enter a number, even in shareware, which you can use for 30 days, they can deactivate it after 30 days, there are a lot of simple things they could do to make it harder to enjoy the illegally downloaded music.

An MP3 or MPEG or DIV/X or other media file are not the same as a program - they are data only. The security system would have to be interaction between the player program and the data file.

Of course, even IF you could protect music files using a special encoding technique, special computer hardware, and special software, you have to actually PLAY the music at some point, after all, that's the point.

You could always at that point re-record the audio, and encode it in a non-protected format... like MP3. Bye bye protection!

[Dr Warmoose]

These guys are trying to stop a freight train by putting a glass jar on the track. It won't work. Somebody will just figure out a way to bypass the bad files.

Or more likely, someone will figure out how to trigger this "computer destroying" virus. Actually, there is a program out there that already destroys a computer - Windows.

[BrooklynGOP]

Free trade?

[BrooklynGOP]

Like, this is a joke? Correct? He can't be serious? You just destroy a thousands of dollars computer for downloading a stupid song? Right. Sure.

Nah. I don't see how you can possible destroy hardware. Maybe overwrite a rom or something - but that's fixable. In any case, at worst you'll loose your data. But this will be a declaration of war on pirates and I think pirates would win this one as well.