Newest label ploy: Get Congress to make it legal to damage your PC for file sharing

Online sharing & "piracy"
Newest label ploy: Get Congress to make it legal to damage your PC for file sharing
By Newshare staff
Jul 27, 2002, 09:22

As expected, California Sen. Howard Berman, who receives campaign contributions from Disney and AOL Time Warner and represents Burbank, where Disney is based, introduced on Thursday (July 25) legislation designed to permit labels to sabotage file sharing. Experts said its language would permit intrusions into a consumer's audio and video files and attacks that would knock a computer off-line. Peter Jaszi, a professor of copyright law at Washington, D.C.'s American University, told Billboard Bulleting the bill is "violently anti-consumer."

Said Berman: "Our legislation does not allow copyright owners to damage the property of any intermediaries -- including ISPs -- or do more than minimal damage to the actual P2P pirate."

Civil-liberties groups and some copyright lawyers cried foul yesterday at the bill, which Billboard Bulletin also said would remove liability from copyright holders that employ "self-help" technological measures to address infringement on peer-to-peer networks.

The Associated Press' Tad Bridis, quoting experts, said its language would permit intrusions into a consumer's audio and video files and attacks that would knock a computer off-line.

Bridis, writing in the Washington Post also said the new bill showed the entertainment industry's frustration with slow-moving efforts by the computer industry to develop technological barriers to making electronic copies of songs and movies. Congressional leaders have said they preferred to wait for technological solutions before considering new copyright enforcement laws.

Berman said his bill would not allow industry to spread viruses across file-trading networks, destroy files or hack into a consumer's personal data, but experts said its language would permit intrusions into a consumer's audio and video files and attacks that would knock a computer off-line.

CNET News' Declan McCullagh called the measure "the boldest political effort to date by record labels and movie studios to disrupt peer-to-peer networks that they view as an increasingly dire threat to their bottom line."

The legislation would still allow major media companies to offer file-trading through their own P2P sharing systems, such as AOL Instant Messenger, Wired News reported.

The BBC also had an earlier story.

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