Re: Draft of Rep. Berman's bill authorizes anti-P2P hacking

[Richard A Steenbergen <ras () e-gerbil net>]

On Thu, Jul 25, 2002 at 02:37:15PM -0700, Rowland, Alan  D wrote:
> I fully agree this is Not Good (TM), hence the BAD in my response. Having
> said that, satellite providers periodically 'kill' hacked access cards on
> equipment in the user's home with no legal ramifications. How would this be
> significantly different?  Waiving the fourth amendment flag is just FUD in
> this case.

Satellite access cards are technically the property of the individual
companies and are not allowed to be sold, so if they want to send down 
some code which disables your access to their system they are allowed.
Causing damage to someone's receiver on the other hand, would be bad mojo.

However, someone's computer is NOT their property, nothing on it belongs
to them (except maybe the copyrighted material of the clients they
represent :P), not even a service you are getting from them.

I can't imagine they would actually follow through with this though, all
it takes is one incident where they cause financial harm to someone with
an mp3 they misidentify and their highground is gone. Then again, I can't
imagine congress being so massively stupid either, so I suppose anything 
is possible.

-- 
Richard A Steenbergen <ras () e-gerbil net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177  (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA  B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)