I thank the RIAA for replying. There seems to be only one important
question here: Did the RIAA's now-abandoned amendment do what legal
analysts, such as the folks I quoted in my article, say it would?
If the answer to that question is "yes" -- if the RIAA's amendment would
permit a copyright holder to hack computers and delete information -- then
it doesn't matter what the RIAA now insists its intentions were. The RIAA
has some very bright lawyers who don't draft amendments carelessly. The
truth is in the language of the legislation; the rest is spin.
This is not meant to be an attack on the RIAA. The group has done some
laudable work in the past on First Amendment issues, and sometimes gets
unfairly attacked in the Net.community. Somehow, though, I don't think this
is one of those times.
The RIAA's proposed amendment to the USA anti-terrorism bill:
http://www.wartimeliberty.com/article.pl?sid=01/10/14/1756248
Previous Politech message:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02656.html
-Declan
*********
Subject: in case you hadn't seen it...
To: declan_at_wired.com
From: JCabrera_at_riaa.com
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 16:42:08 -0400
Declan,
Just wanted to send you the concerns folks have on this end. Do with this
what you will. Figured you'd appreciate the heads up...
The False Anti-Terrorism Rumor Debunked
We would like to take this opportunity to clear up a misconception that
has been spread around the Internet and the media faster than we can
respond to it.
Contrary to what you may have seen, read or heard the recording industry
never lobbied congress to give us the ability to hack into PCs, plant
viruses, destroy MP3 files on people's computers, and worse. That is
complete nonsense, and totally untrue.
Allow us to present the facts:
Ever since we won the Napster case, we've been asked: what are you going
to do about peer-to-peer services like Gnutella which have no
centralized directory? A lawsuit can't shut them down. What will you do?
And we've said that the real solution ? the long-term solution ? is a
marketplace solution. That we have to get into the marketplace and offer
not only a legitimate alternative, but a better alternative that will
attract consumers because of the value we provide.
But we've also said that there were technical measures that could be
used to address the problem. We didn't get very specific about what
those technical measures were, but we always made clear that we would
rely on technological solutions to address technological problems.
And in fact, a number of companies have developed the technology for
these technical measures. Some of them may already be in use, but at
RIAA, we've been analyzing the law to make sure that using these
technical measures would be completely lawful.
A couple of weeks ago, the Senate made public for the first time the
anti-terrorism legislation it had privately been drafting. And when we
looked at it, we found that one of the provisions in this massive bill
would have changed existing law in a way that would prevent us from
using technical measures that would otherwise have been perfectly
lawful.
The provision wasn't aimed at anything we were doing or thinking of
doing. Nor was it aimed at technical measures used by ISPs, and eBay,
and other businesses to protect the integrity of their products and
their systems. But inadvertently, this change in the law would have
prevented us from using technical measures to protect copyrighted works.
When we discovered the change, we brought it to the attention of the
Department of Justice; the Senate staff working on the bill; and other
industry groups. The staff confirmed that the effect on us was
inadvertent, and asked us to propose a fix, a "patch" to eliminate the
problem for our industry. We did so ? based on suggestions from the
Department of Justice and Senate staff.
Ultimately, the Senate staff figured out a way to change their original
provision to eliminate its unintended effect, and that worked just fine
for us. And it worked for a whole lot of other industry groups that also
felt that this provision had to be fixed ? the ISP community, telecom
companies, the NetCoalition, the Chamber of Commerce, as well as content
industries like motion pictures and music.
There is nothing unusual about what happened here, especially in the
hectic closing days of a Congressional session. But somehow, it became a
story that we were looking for special new powers to hack into personal
computers.
What's worse ? we were accused of equating Internet piracy with
terrorism. We may take Internet piracy seriously, but we're not insane.
It's one thing to be criticized for what we do ? that's fair game. But
to be vilified for what we don't do ? that's very disheartening.
Unfortunately, we get a lot of that. Half of what is written about us is
just plain wrong. And that's why we really do appreciate you taking the
time to read this, giving us a chance to set the record straight on this
one.
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Received on Oct 24 2001
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