Re: "Hollywood hacking bill" / RFF Reply & Links

All of which brings to mind an editorial that Valenti wrote shortly after the Columbine shootings where he suggested that media violence should not be considered to blame, rather society (and who is the major transmitter of society values???). He suggested that elementary students should have a half hour lesson every day addressing "what is right, and what is wrong."

I have often pondered how much better off we would be as a society of some corporate executives would spend a mere 30 minutes a week pondering what is right and what is wrong about the business decisions they are considering.

Nancy

Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.

Center for Advanced Technology in Education University of Oregon, College of Education E-mail: nwillard[_at_]oregon.uoregon.edu
URL: http://netizen.uoregon.edu

Responsible Netizen Institute
URL:http://responsiblenetizen.org

Richard Forno wrote:

> The way the bill reads, ANY copyright holder can take action - big or small.
> I routinely copyright my e-mails and of course my articles -- so technically
> I could come after you if I suspect you had my copyrighted material on your
> system. Not that I would, but I could under Berman's Bill. :)
>
> Berman's POS bill was so broadly written that in a surprising move, the day
> it was introduced, MPAA's King Jack Valenti had to back away from his
> typical fanatical antipiracy rhetoric, saying "we need to work with the Hill
> more" on the bill......to his credit, he realized how broad this bill is and
> that it went far beyond what Hollywood's lobbyists intended. Of course,
> RIAA's Queen Hillary Rosen was all-too-quick to jump and praise Berman while
> signing the check for his monthly "we own you" payment.
>
> Hollywood's cartels want the Berman Bill to say it's okay for THEM to hunt,
> probe, disrupt, degrade, destroy P2P sites and infringing material, but not
> for ANY copyright holder to do so, which automatically makes Hollywood just
> as much a target as Joe Sixpack, College Students, and ISPs.
>
> If this distinction is made, it will set a new precedent for Hollywood's
> entertainment cartels maintaining their monopoly status and influence over
> the creative industry (they're doing it with the Fritz Chip, Palladium, and
> TCPA anyway).
>
> Unfortunately, this also means if this change is made, Congress is
> essentially telling the "little publishers, artists, and indie groups" that
> their intellectual property interests are not important to America, only
> those of the "major" RIAA/MPAA-endorsed entertainment firms.
>
> The situation is - and they are - Scary. Sad. Pathetic. Greedy. Igornant.
>
> Rick
> Infowarrior.org
>
> Add'l reading on the topic:
>
> Hollywood's Private War For Social Control
> http://www.infowarrior.org/articles/2002-10.html
>
> Operation ENDURING VALENTI
> http://www.infowarrior.org/articles/2002-03.html
>
> National Security and Individual Freedoms:
> How the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) Threatens Both
> http://www.infowarrior.org/articles/2001-05.html
>
> > From: David Dailey <david.dailey[_at_]sru.edu>
> > Reply-To: cni-copyright[_at_]cni.org
> > Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2002 16:01:11 -0400
> > To: Multiple recipients of list <cni-copyright[_at_]cni.org>
> > Subject: "Hollywood hacking bill"
> >
> > Perhaps there has been some discussion of this since the last archives were
> > created at "CNI-COPYRIGHT Forum Archives," so I apologize in advance for
> > insulting any dead horses, visible or not. I am curious about the recent
> > legislation introduced to the US House by representative Berman apparently
> > entitled "LIMITATION ON LIABILITY FOR PROTECTION OF COPYRIGHTED WORKS ON
> > PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS" and visible at http://www.house.gov/berman/p2p.pdf.
> >
> > Question 1: Is anyone aware of the current status of this proposed
> > legislation?
> >
> > It authorizes copyright holders to access any machine of any "file-trader"
> > using "peer-to-peer networks" to interfer with unauthorized copies, and,
> > barring a few exceptions, protects the copyright holder from liability
> > arising for such intrusion. My naive reading (IANAL) of the definitions of
> > the above-quoted terms in the legislation leads me to think this would
> > include all computers on any network including the Internet whether they
> > are serving files or not.
> >
> > The copyright holder has to tell the Justice Department what methods it may
> > use in these disruptions (I don't gather that the Justice department has to
> > approve or publicly disclose the methods), and provides some recourse to
> > the end-user should her computer be wrongfully caused more than $250 damage
> > by the intruder.
> >
> > The bill has had some discussion on the 'Net, as a search for the query
> > ("berman bill" copyright) on Google reveals. Some there have labeled it the
> > "Hollywood hacking bill." Others might view it as a "declaration of hacking
> > war" between various segments of the networked community.
> >
> > Question 2: Does it work both ways? A non-infringing end-user of networks,
> > "A", happens, incidentally, to be a copyright holder (quelle surprise!!). A
> > believes that another copyright holder "B" may have (while performing an
> > invasion of A's computer, as sanctioned by the house bill) made
> > unauthorized copies or derivative works of her files or filenames (the
> > aggregate collection of which would, it seems, qualify as a protected
> > expression). Is she not then authorized to invade B's computers to snoop
> > and thence interfere with any potentially infringing files or processes
> > that B has collected or spawned?
> >
> > It seems relatively straightforward, then that "C", an infringer, will
> > simply take any material M that he has wrongfully copied from B, and merge
> > into it, through a wee bit of encryption, a copy of some material, N, he
> > owns that is worth more than $250, thus creating a file P=e(M+N). B
> > suspects that an unauthorized work belonging to B is on C's computer. B's
> > little eavesdropper (costing only $200 from Virile Viral Enterprises), is
> > delivered surreptitiously through a Department-of-Justice-approved-virus,
> > but has just enough horsepower to detect that P probably contains traces of
> > M. Therefore, B copies P to B's computer, decodes it into M+N, and then
> > returns to C's computer and destroys P. C detects the intrusion and knowing
> > of B's unauthorized copy of copyrighted N, enters B's computers and
> > disrupts those machines and destroys the eavesdropper. C then litigates
> > against B for the damages to N.
> >
> > The legislation sounds like great fun for someone! Poor Hollywood.
> >
> > David Dailey see
> >
> http://www.sru.edu/depts/cisba/compsci/dailey/copyright/dailey_on_copyright.ht>
> m
> > Associate Professor copyright musings: humor and dread
> > Slippery Rock University
> >
> >
Received on Fri Sep 27 2002 - 10:47:00 GMT