FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

FC: Look out, pirates: RIAA wants to hack your PC

------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 13:47:47 -0700 To: politech@politechbot.com From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> Subject: FC: Look out, pirates: RIAA wants to hack your PC Send reply to: declan@well.com

Text of original RIAA amendment to the anti-terrorism bill, which RIAA says it no longer supports: http://www.wartimeliberty.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/14/1756248

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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47552,00.html

RIAA Wants to Hack Your PC By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com) 2:00 a.m. Oct. 15, 2001 PDT

WASHINGTON -- Look out, music pirates: The recording industry wants the right to hack into your computer and delete your stolen MP3s.

It's no joke. Lobbyists for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) tried to glue this hacking-authorization amendment onto a mammoth anti-terrorism bill that Congress approved last week.

An RIAA-drafted amendment, according to a draft obtained by Wired News, would immunize all copyright holders -- including the movie and e-book industry -- for any data losses caused by their hacking efforts or other computer intrusions "that are reasonably intended to impede or prevent" electronic piracy.

In an interview Friday, RIAA lobbyist Mitch Glazier said that his association has abandoned plans to insert that amendment into anti-terrorism bills -- and instead is supporting a revised amendment that takes a more modest approach.

"It will not be some special exception for copyright owners," Glazier said. "It will be a general fix to bring back current law." Glazier is the RIAA's senior vice president of government relations and a former House aide.

The RIAA's interest in the USA Act, an anti-terrorism bill that the Senate and the House approved last week, grew out of an obscure part of it called section 815. Called the "Deterrence and Prevention of Cyberterrorism" section, it says that anyone who breaks into computers and causes damage "aggregating at least $5,000 in value" in a one-year period would be committing a crime.

If the current version of the USA Act becomes law, the RIAA believes, it could outlaw attempts by copyright holders to break into and disable pirate FTP or websites or peer-to-peer networks. Because the bill covers aggregate damage, it could bar anti-piracy efforts that cause little harm to individual users, but meet the $5,000 threshold when combined.

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