Unhelpful

RIAA is trying to legalize hacking and destruction of data for themselves.

According to this Wired.com story (courtesy of Slashdot), RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is trying to get an amendment to the current USA Act (which is of concern in and of itself) that allows them and other copyright holders to gain unauthorized access to your computer and delete all of your illegal MP3s. This is an absolute trampling of Americans’ rights granted by the Fourth Amendment.

There are a few major issues that I would like to address here.

First, RIAA has always spewed the propaganda to lawmakers, and to a lesser extent, the general public, that all MP3s are illegal. I cannot think of a single instance in which RIAA has mentioned the term “MP3″ without prefixing it with the word “illegal”. The fact is, there are perfectly legitimate uses for the MP3 format, and thusly “legal” MP3s. The 1983 Betamax decision by the Supreme Court clears the way for MP3s to exist, since it is a technology with a legitimate use. All one needs is a single example.

That being said, I own original CDs for every MP3 I have. Subsequent decisions based on the Betamax case have already made it clear that making copies of one’s recording onto other devices is legal. Thus, my MP3s are legal. Since there exist legal MP3s, and legal uses for them, RIAA has no position to say that all MP3s are illegal.

It is not possible to distinguish between a legitimately created MP3 and one that has been acquired by illegitimate means, from the MP3 itself. To destroy all MP3s without questioning whether they are legal or not will result in the destruction of legitimate MP3s, which constitutes destruction of private property. This is not permissible. There is the option of an audit of one’s personal possession against MP3s, but this too is also barred by the Fourth Amendment. “Just checking for possible illegal MP3s” doesn’t even begin to address the issue of probable cause.

Allowing RIAA to break into other people’s machines is also barred by our friend the Fourth Amendment. Probable cause has to be established on an individual basis. I own the computer, I own the network it is directly connected to. It is mine, and neither RIAA, nor anyone else, has any rights, nor expectation of rights, to my property. The only way I can be “forced” to allow someone else into my machine is by search warrant. Call me a fool, but last I knew, you had to be part of law enforcement to get a search warrant. RIAA is not a law enforcement agency; them taking it upon themselves to search, judge, and enforce is nothing less than vigilantism.

The next question of course, is the technical implementation. How exactly will they do this? We’ll of course never know, but there are a few basic options. Setting up a center full of people to probe machines and do live break-ins is expensive. A less expensive and simpler approach would be to write a program that breaks in via well-known security weaknesses and delivers its payload automatically. That sounds suspiciously familiar. One wonders if someone in RIAA heard about the massive spread of the Code Red family of worms, and Nimda, and had the thought “We can use that.”

I don’t know how many times I can say “Violation of the Fourth Amendment” in response to this entire matter. The simple synopsis is that RIAA wants to delete every MP3, regardless of whether it’s legal - by the way, they would be legally immune from prosecution for incidental damage. Virtually every aspect of what they want to do constitutes unreasonable search and seizure. The desires of RIAA are so un-Constitutional that they could even be thought of as un-American. I believe I’ll start referring to them as “RIA”.

In summary, they want to be able to do anything they want to you, including destroying every piece of data on your computer, and launching denial-of-service attacks against you that could prevent you from legitimate use of your resources. Plus, they want to be able to do it without a shred of proof.

You know what the really scary thing is?

They’ll probably get it passed.

Comments? [dead link]

(Addendum: Since I originally wrote this piece, the original Wired article was amended to state that RIA had withdrawn its original as-written amendment to the USA Act to rewrite it)