KILLING A COMPUTER

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In other attempts to disrupt file sharing networks, the RIAA has reportedly hired companies to try a variety of tactics that include creating fake computers stocked with useless files of cuckoo eggs, deliberately trying to crash computers running file sharing programs, hacking into file sharing computers and deleting MP3 files (whether they’re legal or not), and launching denial-of-service attacks on blatant file sharing computers by continually requesting files, which prevents other users from accessing those files.

Technically, many of these methods, such as deleting files from an offender’s computer or launching a denial-of-service attack on a blatant file sharing computer, are illegal. To fix this minor problem of legality, the recording industry’s latest attempt has been to pass a law allowing copyright holders to hack into copyright infringers’ computers and disable, block, or interfere with their activities, provided the damage doesn’t exceed a certain monetary amount, such as $50, although the specific method of hacking a copyright violator isn’t defined. One draft of this potential law, called the Berman Copyright Bill, can be viewed at Declan McCullagh’s Politech website (http://www.politechbot.com/docs/berman.coble.p2p.final.072502.pdf).

By giving the entertainment industry the freedom to circumvent normal anti-hacking laws and to directly attack the computers of offenders, the combined music, movie, and electronic book publishing industries hope to use force to protect their copyrights where legislation, educational campaigns, levies on recordable media, and copy-protection schemes haven’t had much success.

(Of course, people could always upload email messages to the computers of Sony or Universal Studios, and then hack into those computers to disable them, claiming that they were only trying to prevent those corporations from distributing copies of their copyrighted email messages. If corporations can skirt the law and hack into other people’s computers, hackers will likely claim the same right to hack into corporate computers, and given a battle between corporate programmers and hackers worldwide, it doesn’t take much imagination to see which side will lose.)

Senator Orin Hatch of Utah went even further and suggested that all computers should be forced to include “kill switches,” which would allow the authorities to remotely disable a computer whose user was breaking the law. Orin Hatch’s legislation would require copyright holders to give an offender two warnings before activating the kill switch to destroy or permanently disable the computer.

“That may be the only way you can teach these people about copyright infringement,” Hatch told reporters. “Requiring kill switches is an extreme step, but if the private sector can’t stop piracy on its own, the government will.”

Hatch further explained, “The kill switch would necessarily include an audit trail and some sort of way to prevent it from being abused by people other than legitimate intellectual property holders.” Anyone who misuses the kill switch, Hatch promised, would be subjected to prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice (assuming, of course, that the U.S. Department of Justice can find the hackers responsible, even if they happen to live in remote places like Ecuador, Libya, or Thailand).

Orin Hatch’s proposal follows a similar bill by South Carolina Senator Fritz Hollings, which would require computer and consumer-electronics companies to build copyright-protection technology into future products (as if that’s going to help sell more products).

The idea of crafting laws that allow copyright holders to engage in destructive hacking tactics that only benefit a handful of corporations reveals how desperate the entertainment industries must be to stem the hemorrhaging of their profits. If any of these bills ever become law, you can be sure that hackers will not only find a loophole in the legal wording, but they’ll apply more destructive attacks on the corporate computers in retaliation—attacks that might well be legally protected under the entertainment industry’s own “remote hacking to punish copyright infringers” law.

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