--- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6241-2003Jun17.html Hatch Takes Aim at Illegal Downloading By TED BRIDIS The Associated Press Tuesday, June 17, 2003; 5:22 PM [...] "No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer," replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can't. "I'm interested," [Orrin] Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights." The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer." "If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said. "There's no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws," Hatch said. [...] --- Sen. Hatch's statement today: http://www.senate.gov/~hatch/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=205147 HATCH COMMENTS ON COPYRIGHT ENFORCEMENT Washington – Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today issued the following statement: “I am very concerned about Internet piracy of personal and copyrighted materials, and I want to find effective solutions to these problems. “I made my comments at yesterday’s hearing because 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. I do not favor extreme remedies – unless no moderate remedies can be found. I asked the interested industries to help us find those moderate remedies.” --- It's conceivable that Hatch is talking about the same kind of proposal that Rep. Berman introduced last year: http://www.politechbot.com/p-04035.html It's a complicated bill and worth reading for yourself, but one section says "a copyright owner shall not be liable in any criminal or civil action for disabling, interfering with, blocking, diverting, or otherwise impairing the unauthorized distribution, display, performance, or reproduction of his or her copyrighted work on a publicly accessible peer-to-peer file trading network": http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r.05211: -Declan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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