Hollywood Hackers

AARG! Anonymous remailer at aarg.net
Mon Jul 29 12:25:25 PDT 2002


On Mon, 29 Jul 2002 14:25:37 -0400 (EDT), you wrote:
>
> Congressman Wants to Let Entertainment Industry Get Into Your Computer
>
>       Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Calif., formally proposed
>       legislation that would give the industry unprecedented new
>       authority to secretly hack into consumers' computers or knock
>       them off-line entirely if they are caught downloading
>       copyrighted material.
>
> I've been reading things like this for a while but I wonder how practical
> such an attack would be. They won't be able to hack into computers with
> reasonable firewalls and while they might try DOS attacks, upstream
> connectivity suppliers might object. Under current P2P software they may
> be able to do a little hacking but the opposition will rewrite the
> software to block. DOS attacks and phony file uploads can be defeated
> with digital signatures and reputation systems (including third party
> certification). Another problem -- Napster had 55 million customers.
> That's a lot of people to attack. I don't think Hollywood has the troops.

I like this scenario: Adam places his copyrighted content on his web site. His friend, Eve, 
violates his copyright and places Adam's copyrighted content on her site. Hollywood downloads the 
copyright-infringing content from Eve's site. Eve confesses that Hollywood did so, in a good faith 
effort to repent from her copyright infringement. Now Adam hacks Hollywood, as authorized by the 
proposed law. Lawsuits all around.





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