Wednesday, May 29, 2013

RIAA: All your computers are belong to us

The Entertainment industry wants the legal right to put trojans on your computer and hold your files hostage.  Srlsy:
The hilariously named "Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property" has finally released its report, an 84-page tome that's pretty bonkers. But amidst all that crazy, 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. This is the mechanism that crooks use when they deploy ransomware.
Because the RIAA would never make a mistake and think that a Grandmother was pirating rock 'n roll music:
On Friday, the Recording Industry Association of America withdrew its lawsuit against Sarah Seabury Ward of Newbury, Massachusetts, after the 66-year-old grandmother said she had never used or even downloaded any peer-to-peer file-sharing software. Bolstering her claim is the fact that Ward and her husband own a Macintosh computer, which is incompatible with the Kazaa file-sharing network they're accused of using to share more than 2,000 songs.
Another reason to run Linux, if that there law gets passed.

4 comments:

Old NFO said...

Good point! And they won't give up...

Pyrotek85 said...

Uh yeah no.

Anonymous said...

Another reason among many to run Linux, as well as another reason among many to run TOR system wide, not just for browsing.

Borepatch said...

ccbpc, I dig tor. But not for bittorrent (not recommended)