FC: RIAA claims it never wanted to hack PCs, was misunderstood

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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 () wired com
From: JCabrera () 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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