Will the Music Industry Use Illegal Measures to Counteract Piracy?
My friend handed me this article late last night to read from the $3.50 Sunday Edition of the New York Times. In Software Bullet Is Sought to Kill Musical Piracy, Mr. Sorkin tells us that the record companies "are quietly financing the development and testing of software programs that would sabotage the computers and Internet connections of people who download pirated music ... which may never be carried out because they could be illegal under state and federal wiretap laws."
The technological approaches being developed include a Trojan horse that redirects users to Web sites where they can legitimately buy the song they tried to download; DOS attacks; the "freeze" program that locks up the computer system for a certain duration; and the "silence" program that scans a computer's hard drive for pirated music files and attempts to delete them, which in testing deletes legitimate music files as well.
Professor Lessig is quoted as saying that "Freezing people's computers is not within the scope of the copyright laws." It will be interesting to find out. Feel free to contact me to report any instances of such uses of technology and I will update this posting with your information.
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Wish I had thought of this. [061103]
The technological approaches being developed include a Trojan horse that redirects users to Web sites where they can legitimately buy the song they tried to download; DOS attacks; the "freeze" program that locks up the computer system for a certain duration; and the "silence" program that scans a computer's hard drive for pirated music files and attempts to delete them, which in testing deletes legitimate music files as well.
Professor Lessig is quoted as saying that "Freezing people's computers is not within the scope of the copyright laws." It will be interesting to find out. Feel free to contact me to report any instances of such uses of technology and I will update this posting with your information.
Related Headlines:
