Posted on 07/25/2002 7:08:56 PM PDT by dogbyte12
update WASHINGTON--Copyright owners would be able to legally hack into peer-to-peer networks, according to a bill introduced in the House of Representatives on Thursday.
As previously reported by CNET News.com, the measure would dramatically rewrite federal law to permit nearly unchecked electronic disruptions if a copyright holder has a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is occurring.
The bill, sponsored by Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Howard Coble, R-N.C., would immunize groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) from all state and federal laws if they disable, block or otherwise impair a "publicly accessible peer-to-peer file-trading network."
"The bill my colleagues and I introduce today will free the marketplace to develop technologies that thwart P2P piracy without impairing P2P networks themselves," Berman said in a statement Thursday. "It will do so by allowing copyright owners, in certain limited circumstances, to use technological tools to thwart P2P piracy without fear of liability."
Berman did not say what techniques he anticipated content owners would use. He said, however, that "removing the unintended legal constraints on technologies that may help deal with the problem is an important part of the solution."
Even before the proposal was introduced, legal scholars and technology trade associations began to criticize it.
"The bill is a nightmare," said Mark Lemley, who teaches intellectual property law at the University of California at Berkeley. "I am amazed that after Sept. 11, members of Congress are willing to sacrifice our nation's computer security in order to give Hollywood yet another tool in its already formidable arsenal against piracy."
Lemley predicted that the practical effect of the bill would be to eliminate peer-to-peer networking. "If content owners can shut down a network with impunity, they may stop some piracy, but they will also stop any hope of using this important new technology for legitimate means," he said.
Because Congress only has about five work weeks left before it is scheduled to adjourn for the year, the outlook for the bill is uncertain.
However, its sponsors include top Republican and Democratic committee chairmen so it's likely to receive a warm welcome in the House of Representatives at a hearing tentatively scheduled for this fall. Coble is the chairman of the House subcommittee on intellectual property, and Berman is the top Democrat on the panel.
a statement released on Thursday afternoon, the RIAA welcomed the bill.
"We applaud Congressman Berman for introducing bipartisan legislation that takes an innovative approach to combating the serious problem of Internet piracy," said Hilary Rosen, CEO of the RIAA.
"The current landscape for online music is dangerously one-sided, with the peer-to-peer pirates enjoying an unfair advantage," Rosen said. "It makes sense to clarify existing laws to ensure that copyright owners...are at least able to defend their works from mass piracy."
Tech vs. Hollywood Will Rodger, the director of public policy at the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), said his group would do its utmost to oppose the bill. CCIA's members include AOL Time Warner, Sun Microsystems and Oracle.
"If I have one illegal MP3 on my computer, Hollywood gets $50 of free damage," Rodger said, referring to a part of the still-unnamed bill that says an electronic intrusion may not cause "economic loss of more than $50 per impairment to the property of the affected file trader."
"Extending that logic further," Rodger said, "if I have 50 infringing MP3s on my computer, Hollywood is free to trash it entirely. This is vigilante justice for the 21st century."
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.
Other critics have pointed out that because the proposal applies to any copyright holder, news organizations, photographers, and even the Church of Scientology would be granted new hacking authority.
According to the bill, the U.S. attorney general must be provided 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 never be divulged to the public.
The film and music industries already are developing tools to use against rogue file swapping, though they've remained mum on the details. The RIAA says its members have the right to use any "lawful and appropriate self-help measure."
Fritz Attaway, the MPAA's senior vice president for government relations, endorsed Berman's approach on Monday, stressing that law-abiding Internet users should not be concerned.
"No one in the motion picture industry has any interest in invading your computer or doing anything malicious with your files," Attaway said. "The idea is to make unauthorized file sharing sufficiently inconvenient or at least unsuccessful."
Congress is a criminal class paid for by those with the deepest pockets.
Pay back is a female dog.
Be reeal interesting to find out which AND how much the affected lobbyists gave these two pinheads -- Berman and Coble -- to "introduce" this absurd legislation.
It does big time. Since February 26 2002 hacking may put you in jail for life if you are not one of the Hollywood bonzos.
I think you are right on the money, sir.
Recently, your colleague, Rep. Howard L. Berman from California introduced a bill to allow copyright-holders and media companies to use technology methods which "impair" the ability of Peer-to-Peer networks (P2P) to distribute unauthorized copies of copyrighted works over the Internet (the "Peer to Peer Piracy Prevention Act", HR-5211). I believe this bill is currently before the Judiciary Committee for markup.
I am writing to urge you to vote AGAINST this bill for the following reasons:
I will now amplify each of these points from my perspective. I am a network security consultant with seven years of experience in internet technologies and a resident of Charlotte. I do not participate in any P2P file-sharing networks, but I have studied them from a security posture, and I offer the following thoughts.
The problem, as I see it, is the uncontrolled piracy and distribution of copyrighted works without payment of royalties to the copyright holders. This is not a new problem. When I was in high school, it was common practice to record certain tracks from a record album to a cassette tape, for portability and flexibility in the enjoyment of the music which was legally purchased, and this practice was allowed by the fair-use provisions of copyright law. It became illegal when these copies were furnished to friends or others who should have bought their own copies of the original record album.
This is not a problem unique to the recording industry. Software technology companies such as Microsoft have been dealing with piracy of their products for years. However, these companies have chosen to incorporate anti-piracy technologies into their products -- some successful, some not -- rather than lobbying for legislation which would permit them to invade their customers personal computers to "impair" the pirated works.
The de-centralization of P2P networks is a direct response to the court decision which shut down the old Napster network. The Napster model was a database and a repository for pirated works, in that there was a single entity which operated servers which contained the pirated works. The de-centralized model is a database only, which points to many other privately operated servers which contain the pirated works. These servers are owned by hobbyists who make their "private" collections available through their own Internet connectivity.
The nature of Internet connectivity technology means that these distributed servers do not stay at one "address" for very long. The use of Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) by their Internet Service Providers ensures that the central database servers will always contain some level of inaccuracy, and must be constantly updated. Thus, there is no guarantee that any particular work which was available yesterday is still available today, but it might be available tomorrow at a different address. Today, the database may be pointing to a different computer, which has no copyrighted material on it at all, and is not a part of any P2P network.
I expect that the P2P networks will continue to evolve in response to measures taken by copyright holders, whether legal or not. Technology-based "impairment" techniques will be discovered, and measures will be taken by the P2P networks to defend against these techniques. This will result in the continued development of de-centralized file sharing networks, and will not bring relief to the copyright holders. It will also cause damage to third-party Internet users who do not have a dog in this fight, as I will illustrate next.
Encouragement of vigilante justice is never a good idea.
Several years ago, a group of coordinated Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against certain media companies like CNN, ABC, CBS, etc., robbed these companies of their Internet connectivity and caused general havoc to Internet users world-wide. The effects were temporary and lasted for only a few days, but some media companies and their ISPs lost millions of dollars in advertising revenue and lost business. If I remember correctly, only one hacker - a canadian teenager known as "Mafia Boy" - was ever brought to justice for his role in the matter. The extent of the attack was far too large for Mafia Boy to have conducted it alone. Many hackers who participated in the attacks escaped detection, because a lot of painstaking work is required to trace this kind of attack to its origin, and there are many ways of covering one's tracks on the Internet.
The methods used in DDoS attacks continue to evolve, and I'd say the danger today is greater than it was then, simply due to the massive proliferation of broadband Internet connectivity. There are many computers up and running 24 hours per day, which are vulnerable to being invaded by a black-hat hacker and used for attacking other computers. I and my colleagues in the security industry have been attacked in this way. The FBI will not investigate these incidents unless we can show a loss of at least $10,000.
The hypocrisy of allowing a certain industry a safe harbor from prosecution of "hacking" incidents will not be ignored by the black-hat hacker community; particularly those hackers who are members of P2P networks.
While the vast majority of home Internet users are assigned "temporary" leases on their Internet addresses through DHCP, the media companies and copyright holders have "fixed" addresses which do not change, and these address ranges are fairly well known and easy to discover. In other words, they cannot merely change addresses and "hide" from danger. If safe harbor is allowed, the attitude among the black-hats will be, "if you can hack, then we can hack, and we outnumber you and we know where you live."
Now consider the plight of the innocent victims who will be caught in the crossfire of these battles. Consider that any communications between Internet-connected computers is broken down into "packets" of data, and each packet is transported separately to its destination. These packets traverse many different network segments in order to get from here to there, and everybody shares the network -- you, me and CNN. Imagine a fleet of US Mail trucks each carrying a bunch of envelopes (packets) across the interstate highway system. There are many different routes that each truck could take, and no two trucks going to the same city need to take the same route.
There are clear indications that this bill has not been well thought-out. There is evidence that Mr. Berman's loyalty to the entertainment industry has been purchased with nearly $187,000 in PAC contributions during the last congressional cycle. Consumers cannot compete with the attention that this kind of money will attract, yet Mr. Berman was elected by the consumers, to do work for them. And then he introduces legislation like this?
For all of these reasons, I urge you to vote against this bill when it comes out of the committee and before the House.... assuming it ever does.
The usual laws of economics should apply in this case. Commodities prices normally decrease after a certain amount of time in the marketplace, but the prices of CDs and DVDs have been going up over the last 5 years. This is surely part of the problem.
When people decide to purchase a CD, it's usually because one or two tracks on the CD are particularly appealing. Most folks do not necessarily want to spend up to $20 for one or two tracks. Yet, this is what the industry forces them to do, by including unpopular selections to fill up a CD.
The entertainment industry is flush with cash, still collecting royalties on each blank video and audio cassette sold, and now on each blank audio CD.
The industry is not innovative, trying to sell "copy-protected audio discs" (which look like CDs, but really aren't) which will not play on all consumer playback equipment sold today.
The industry apparently prefers to buy legislation which would enable them to commit crimes that would put any private citizen in jail.
The industry needs to learn how to "work smarter" at this.
Unfortunately for us consumers, they are not listening and are not yet satisfied.
Please help defeat this legislation and keep all hacking illegal.
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