[ISN] Senator OK with zapping pirates' PCs

From: InfoSec News (isnat_private)
Date: Thu Jun 19 2003 - 03:08:23 PDT

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    http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-1018845.html
    
    By Declan McCullagh 
    Staff Writer, CNET News.com
    June 18, 2003
    
    Sen. Orrin Hatch on Wednesday backpedaled slightly from his suggestion
    a day earlier that copyright holders should be allowed to remotely
    destroy the computers of music pirates.
    
    In a brief press release, Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate
    Judiciary Committee, said that he suggested the idea at Tuesday's
    hearing
    
    "I think that industry is not doing enough to help us find effective
    ways to stop people from using computers to steal copyrighted,
    personal or sensitive materials," he said.
    
    But Hatch noted that his proposed law permitting wide-scale
    destruction of computers used to download illicit files from
    peer-to-peer networks was still on the table. "I do not favor extreme
    remedies--unless no moderate remedies can be found," Hatch said in the
    statement.
    
    Because Hatch oversees the Senate committee responsible for writing
    criminal laws, and because he has taken a personal interest in
    copyright legislation, his suggestion raised eyebrows and some alarm
    in Washington. It represents the most radical proposal to date in
    Congress, going even further than a bill introduced last year by Rep.  
    Howard Berman, D-Calif., that would have permitted copyright holders
    to disable or block a P2P node that they suspected of distributing
    their intellectual property without permission.
    
    During a hearing that Hatch convened Tuesday on the "national security
    risks" of P2P networks, he asked a witness, "Can you destroy their set
    in their home?" referring to a home PC.
    
    Randy Saaf of MediaDefender, a secretive Los Angeles company that
    works with the recording industry to disrupt P2P networks, replied by
    saying "nobody" is interested in that approach.
    
    "I am," Hatch said. "I'm interested in doing that. That may be the
    only way you can teach someone about copyright...That would be the
    ultimate way of making sure" no more copyright is infringed.
    
    Hatch suggested that Congress would have to amend laws restricting
    computer intrusions. "If it's the only way you can do it," Hatch said,
    "then I'm all for destroying their machines...but you'd have to pass
    legislation permitting that, it seems to me, before someone could
    really do that with any degree of assurance that they're doing
    something that might be proper."
    
    Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department prosecutor who is an associate
    professor at George Washington University law school, says Hatch's
    idea "would not only be a bad idea, but an extremely bad idea. The
    cure would be worse than the disease."
    
    If Hatch's proposal were to be written into law, Kerr said, it would
    have to amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a federal computer
    crime statute. "It would give an exception to copyright owners who are
    taking reasonable steps to disable acts of copyright infringement,"  
    Kerr said. "The trick is that all of these (disruption or disabling)  
    offenses are crimes under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act."
    
    In the past, Hatch has chosen sides carefully in copyright tussles. He
    commended the Justice Department for arresting Dmitri Sklyarov, a
    Russian programmer charged with criminal violations of the Digital
    Millennium Copyright Act, and he claimed in 1999 that the
    controversial law "laid the cornerstone for a rich and more vibrant
    Internet." But a year later, Hatch split with the Clinton
    administration when it sided with the record labels against Napster,
    and a former top Hatch aide, Manus Cooney, left to become Napster's
    chief lobbyist.
    
    Hatch's proposal for legislation left public interest groups puzzled
    and alarmed. Mike Godwin, an attorney at Public Knowledge, said, "Much
    as I respect Sen. Hatch, he is virtually alone in believing that the
    destruction of computers could even be a last-ditch remedy for
    copyright infringement."
    
    "I wish he hadn't said that," Godwin said. "And over time I suspect
    he'll wish he hadn't said that either."
    
    Hatch is a conservative Mormon and former church bishop who was a
    presidential candidate in 2000 and is an amateur songwriter.
    
    On Wednesday, Hatch came under attack for allegedly being a copyright
    pirate himself. His hatch.senate.gov Web site's menus use JavaScript
    code created by the U.K. company Milonic Solutions. Milonic Solutions
    charges between $35 and $900 for the right to obtain a license number
    for its JavaScript menu, but Hatch's site does not include a license
    number. Instead, this comment appears in the site's HTML code: "i am
    the license for the menu (duh)."
    
    A Hatch representative did not immediately respond to a request for
    comment.
    
    
    
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