d2r: hacking as defense

hacking as defense

Hollywood and the recording labels have succeeded in their lobbying efforts to introduce a bill in the US Congress that would allow them to hack machines if they are suspected of participating in piracy. The bill has just been introduced, so it's far from clear what will happen, and even maybe unlikely that it will pass, but I think that, rather than doing what the RIAA says, "fight fire with fire," they are actually doing something more along the lines of "fight fire by breaking into the house, stealing everything, and jailing the owner." I wonder what they are doing to influence things internationally, particuarly in the European Union.

When are they going to realize that if only they provided a good, reasonably inexpensive way to share media, people would use it? Most people that use P2P have fast connections, large amounts of storage, and good machines, which means they are, on average, affluent. Therefore, they could pay, and would, if the price was right, if the service was good.

Categories: technology
Posted by diego on July 24 2002 at 4:22 PM

Comments (please see the comments & trackback policy).

Actually, I think that if they were to "fight fire with fire" they should rather try hacking into your computer, steal your personal data, files, etc. and make them public to everyone. Or, even better, sell them to spammers.

Since their industry is losing money from all this illegal traffic, they need to find a way to stop it. Offering a subscription based service of their own wouldn't have any effect at all, since all of the major existing services are for free. As long as there is a free alternative to any subscription based service, I find it hard to believe that people would ever think of paying money to use something that they can get for nothing. After all there is no added value to using another service.

So, unless you make it impossible either to play back unauthorized files through the use of DRM technology, or to trade them through all these P2P services, they are lost. So, threatening people that they'll hack their computers and delete all their files, is a step forward to this direction.

Posted by: Chris at July 25, 2002 12:44 PM