Can I tell you how much this scares thes shit out of me?
The bill talked about in that article on CNET basically says that if the RIAA or MPAA suspect you are involved in some sort of peer to peer sharing of copyrighted material, they have the right to do whatever they can to stop the P2P network. According to the article the bill does not specify what means are too far. This means that a DOS attack or a virus or just plaing hacking in to your machine and doing an rm -rf / would all be LEGAL. Also, there is a clause in it that you must ask the US Attorney General for PERMISSION to sue them if they destroy stuff on your system which is worth more than $250. If they just destroy ten years of e-mail, it doesn't have a monetary value and even if you could point to one, the AG could still turn down your request. This frighten me badly.
The reason this scares me the most is that some people could create a peer to peer network to share their own works, or works of bands that allow copying of certain material (ala Phish or the Grateful Dead). If you get involved with a group like this and the MPAA/RIAA get wind of it and decide you are not doing what you say you are doing, they could go and attack your machine. Basically, they would have the right to attack anyone they wanted as long as they had some level of suspicion. To me, that means noone's machine is safe. Someone breaks in to your unix box and starts causing trouble, the next thing you know, you have the MPAA or the RIAA breaking in to cause even more trouble. This could end in a very vicious cycle.
The rather hypocritical part about this is that they want to do what they are so against. They want to use illegal means to stop the illegal activities that are being perpetrated against them. The amusing part to me is that they don't want to get in trouble for it, but they want the people they are doing illegal things to, to get in trouble, if they find what they were looking for.
Here's an even more interesting point. The police cannot search your house without a warrant. Why should my electonic "house" be searchable by someone who is not even in some level of law enforcement because they decided that they saw something which made them suspicious. I think that's the best argument against that I can think of. Imagine the police were allowed to enter your home at any time for any reason they wanted. I mean, I have long hair, I must be doing drugs, so therefore, I would have the police stopping by on a daily basis to check my place for drugs. I think that would be a very scary world to live in.
Well, enough complaining. Hopefully this has no chance of going through, but if it does, make sure you have every security update possible on your systems, your routers, etc.
