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

[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.