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Status: U To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: "Cory Doctorow" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Mailing-List: list [EMAIL PROTECTED]; contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 09:33:54 -0700 Subject: [Boing Boing Blog] Hollywood asks Congress for Letters of Marque Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://groups.yahoo.com/> <http://groups.yahoo.com/mygroups>My Groups | <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/boingboing-mailblog>boingboing-mailblog Main Page Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif has called for a bill that would create a "safe harbor" for rights-holders who want to attack P2P networks to "protect" their works. A safe harbor is a checklist of qualifications that will guarantee you immunity from prosecution. An ISP that does x, y and z can't be prosecuted for secondary infringement under the DMCA's safe harbor. Berman is asking Congress for a safe harbor for RIAA and MPAA attacks on P2P systems. At first, this actually seemed slightly reasonable to me. Berman says that his bill won't allow rights-holders to damage individual or ISP computers, and he says the kind of thing they're planning is flooding the network with bad rips, spoofy meta-data (mislabelling tracks) and so on. Hey, that's already a problem in the wild in P2P networks, so what's the big deal, right? There's something fishy here. Bad meta-data and bad rips are not criminal acts. There's no need for a safe harbor to protect the labels if they want to put up Gnutella hosts with 20,000,000 bad tracks (there're already Christian groups that put up inspirational/chiding images with names that suggest that the files contain porn, and so put their material directly into sinners' hands). Why does Big Content need a safe harbor for something that's not a criminal act? Safe harbors only exist to protect people who are engaged in an activity that would otherwise be illegal. When Hollywood seeks a safe harbor for its attacks on the Internet, you know that what it's really asking for are <http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Garden/5213/marque.htm>Letters of Marque -- a license to engage in criminal vigilantism. So either Berman's blowing smoke or he's not telling the whole story. You don't need a safe harbor to protect yourself from bad metadata. Watch out for the text of the bill when it gets introduced -- 90 percent of its social harm is lurking below the surface. <http://news.com.com/2100-1023-939333.html?tag=fd_top>Link <http://www.quicktopic.com/boing/H/cNMPqqC7cKG4>Discuss -- Posted by Cory Doctorow to <http://boingboing.net/>Boing Boing Blog at 6/30/2002 9:32:36 AM Powered by <http://pro2.blogger.com>Blogger Pro To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the <http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/>Yahoo! Terms of Service. --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
