So much for music downloaders breaking the law!

international | miscellaneous | news report

Monday June 23, 2003 16:32

by Declan

Hatch Takes Aim at Illegal Downloading

[...] "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&Press
Release_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:

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