Another good collaboration from our forum members, poertner (http://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?&threadid=5962) posted earlier about this CNN article (http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/06/18/download.music.ap/index.html), US senator, Orrin Hatch stated that they are trying to pass a law that will allow people to destroy someone's computer if they download copyrighted material off the web.

"Illegally download copyright music from the Internet once, or even twice, and you get a warning. Do it a third time, and your computer gets destroyed."

I dare to say I don't see this happening anytime soon, as ridiculous as it sounds however it'd be no good to have the government all in RIAA's side.

I think that this sort of threat getting bounded around is more indictive of fear and insecurity on the part of certain entertainment industries, etc. Technology is changing, and improving, and one day (soon) a lot of old business models will be redundant. Its just life. But they will refuse to accept this, and you will get all sort of stupid characters trying to pass legislation to curb the digital internet media revolution. I guess history will remember them in much the same way as we do luddites, etc - their preposterous legal threats the 21st century equivalent of a literal spanner in the works. Time they learned to shut up.

Shows you how smart some people are. For one thing it isn't possible to destroy someones computer the way that they describe, unless maybe you start placing some sort of detonator on new PC's as a new law, but that would NEVER go over well with anyone and would be a bad idea.

Can we PLEASE get someone in congress that has HALF of a brain, and hasn't been hit on the head repeatedly during childhood.

Sometimes I just want to give up on this entire planet. No one is ever going to learn.

yup...theres no way they could be able to "destroy a computer". this is just rediculous and stupid. people are going to continu to share music online no matter wut, so give it up already.

People destroy other peoples computers and networks on a regular basis beit via the internet or removable storage. The people making that threat just destroyed an entire political regime so it would be very, very, stupid to underestimate them.

Also, its been my experience that in the U.S. the biggest babies don't vote. They just like to whine.

the biggest babies also have the smaller incomes so their word doesn't mean jack to politicians and parties.

Well, the thing to remember with these news stories is that it's usually a particular Senator who creates a story to grab the headlines so he's seen before his upcoming election.

Just because one Senators trying to get his name in the papers does not mean that Congress is even considering proposing a potential bill.

Technology and Piracy are usually hot stories so there have been several stories of stupidly proposed ways of defeating piracy, spam and improving technology lately. 99.9% of those will never see the light of day.

Most of these are just made up by some Senator aid or spin doctor to grab the media's attention.

The above mentioned Senator probably doesn't even own a computer, but his grandkids got an MP3 player so that makes him an expert in how to handle piracy.

Here... Senator Hatch has already backpedeled from his original suggestion....

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-1018845.html

Originally posted by aoj145
Here... Senator Hatch has already backpedeled from his original suggestion....

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-1018845.html

nice info aoj145!

Intteresting to see that not all (us) politicians are totally stupid....

Thankfully no norwegian politicians has had similar ideas, and if they'll do, I'll do my best to go the party I'm a member of to block it...!

3:11 aka Mr.Garibaldi to tired to log in...
Just wanted to make 2 posts...

It doesnt matter who can do what to another persons computer over a network, you can't destroy a PC by any means other than physically destroying it in person. I would sure like to see someone able to make your PC explode or burn. Shyea right. They wish.

I know there is an app which will destroy a HD, but that is all the more I will get into it.

Oh you can run delpart which essentially deletes ALL partitions on ALL hard drives.

Yes, but of course this isn't something that can just be done, I forgot to mention that they will have to hack your system first and gain access to write and etc.

As an ironic follow up. Senator Orrin Hatch is using illegal software on his web site, in violation of the software license. hehe.


http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305,00.html

LOL! That's a riot!!!

I also supposed no one in his office ever photo copied something out of a book.....

Well, deleting a partition is not destroying a computer. That is entirely recoverable. Just reinstall Windows and your applications. No big deal.

Hahahahhaha! ;) That's poetic justice. Maybe some hacker will take down his site - will he see that as justified, do you think?

That would be a riot. I'm sure someone will now that this has gotten out a little bit :)

He deserves it.

---
I am," Hatch said. "I'm interested in doing that. That may be the only way you can teach someone about copyright...That would be the ultimate way of making sure" no more copyright is infringed.
---

Looks like he doesn't know what a hacker or cracker is. Maybe he should ask Madonna.

Originally posted by acidosmosis
It doesnt matter who can do what to another persons computer over a network, you can't destroy a PC by any means other than physically destroying it in person. I would sure like to see someone able to make your PC explode or burn. Shyea right. They wish.

Well, I'm not too sure...

You can destroy several parts of the computer from afar, if you know what you're doing...

A couple of years ago (1999) there was such a nice virus running around taking out your motherboard and harddrive(s)... It wasn't too hard to fix, as long as you didin't reboot your computer... But then, the virus did that by itself...

Now imagine that payload being delivered by a cracker..

2 parts of the computer made non usable...

But lets think about what more than be done...

You could flash the mobo BIOS with a special version which would increase the voltage to your cpu & memory to the max amount the motherboard could supply..

2 parts more out of the game..

We all heard about what happened with the GeForce FX when it was running an OpenGL screensaver a while back... Now imagine something like that done on purpose...

Without those 5 components, I'd call the computer destroyed...

Granted it won't be easy to do, but it is possible, if you know how, and have access to the right tools...

.02$

This is the problem with fighting certain types of piracy now - its just becomming farcical. One wonders how some people from the RIAA and so forth can actually say these things and keep a straight face ;)

Hey Phantasm66, your wish came true...kind of. Apparantly he had a link on his page to some travel advocacy site that got hacked and was redirected to a porn site. ha ha, I'll bet he keeps his head down now....INCOMING!