Boingboing on the latest anti-piracy nonsense from US entertainment industry.
There’s a bit that stands out as particularly insane: a proposal to legalize the use of malware in order to punish people believed to be copying illegally. The report proposes that software would be loaded on computers that would somehow figure out if you were a pirate, and if you were, it would lock your computer up and take all your files hostage until you call the police and confess your crime.
What next? Drone strikes on suspected file-sharers? I’d love to think that crazy proposals like this had absolutely no chance of becoming law, but given the corrupt nature of lobbyist-driven US politics we can’t take anything for granted. When those whose business is supposed to be entertaining us adopts business models indistinguishable from those of The Mafia, something, somewhere has gone horribly wrong.
The problem with all this talk of pirating music is that practically everything you do with music is illegal anyway. Buying a second hand CD is technically illegal; ripping your perfectly legal *brand new* CD to iTunes (or anything similar) it technically illegal; lending your friend your CDs is illegal; burning copies of your CDs (unless it’s for yourself I think..) is illegal – so really it all is a bit of a minefield. There is no way that any of this can be enforced, and there is no government that will want to enforce it. When it comes to online stuff, they will talk tough – like above – but I can’t see anything realistically coming of it. Still, a scary thought..
I would only go along with this proposal if anyone who gets their computer locked up and is then found not to be a pirate is allowed to claim for 1% of the company’s anual turnover as damages plus all costs, including loss of earnings. Plus the head of the relevant department gets prosecuted under the relevant computer abuse act, with the possible sanction of going to jail.
Piracy is wrong, but such an OTT approach requires OTT safeguards.