Anti-piracy group wants to legally deploy rootkits against pirates

In a new example of the entertainment industry’s disconnect with reality and their overreaching tactics, an anti-piracy group known as the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property has issued a 89-page report in which they cite billions of dollars in losses, and suggest a wide variety of measures to combat this nuisance -- like legalizing the use of malware to punish suspected offender.

The scheme calls for software to be pre-installed on users’ computers to identify whether they are illegally copying, storing or consuming copyrighted content. From there a number of scenarios are proposed, such as locking down your computer up and taking all your files hostage until you contact law enforcement to face the consequences.

That’s just scratching the surface, though. More drastic measures mentioned in the report include the ability to infiltrate a network to retrieve or destroy the stolen files, snapping a picture of the offender using his or her webcam, and even physically disabling or destroying the hacker’s own computer or network. None of this is currently permitted under US law but the commission would like to see that amended to allow defensive action.

www.techspot.com...

These people are seriously disconnected with reality. This would be the worst decision to take, although considering the lobbying power of different companies, anything might become into reality. These companies would suffer far more from such action, considering the cyber attacks they would be getting. People have rights and privacy. Such law would only invade every possible virtual right one has.

Even though I do not play video-games, I got so pissed with such absurdic decisions and greed. This is greed after all and it would only back-fire. Invading every possible privacy rule in order to earn more profits??? What is wrong with people...

Such power would give the companies too much room for abuse.

I apologise for re-posting it. I used the search engine, but couldn´t find anything on this particular matter, probably due to keywords.

reply to post by Cabin


Already Posted.

Here

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Discussion here.

Old ideas.... thought up before, tried before on limited scales over the many years past and failed before. I'd be shocked if they did anything but fail again, if tried, and as you can see.....this failure will come in neon on Billboards.

Look up the story of Sears/Prodigy and their snooper software meant to 'do the right thing'. It pretty well destroyed what had been the front runner to AOL way back at the time. People react REAL REAL badly to this sort of thing. Folks just need to know about it. Good catch!

We need laws that defend the hardware owners that are hit by rootkits, viruses and the like willful destruction of property and liken that punishment to the ones deployed for people who use pirated software or media. They're doing all this digitally because they cant stop a VCR from recording a movie on tv, but they can hire goons to ruin someones 1000$ equipment because of 5-25$ loss, is that fair? I mean just go buy something if you want it, but if your making something, you should expect people are going to steal it somewhere, oh and the whole Bill Gates movie, about setting free media and games and communication, that was the whole intent of the creators of internet and computers. Now its a friggin circus of lame.

As stated above, this has been posted.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Please add to the ongoing.

~Tenth