Lawmaker Tries To Foil Illegal File-Sharing
By Robert MacMillan
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 25, 2002; 4:07 PM
Copyright holders would receive carte blanche to use aggressive tactics to stop the illegal distribution of their works on online services like Morpheus and Kazaa under legislation outlined today by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.).
Berman's bill, to be introduced in the next several weeks, would attempt to minimize the illegal trading of copyrighted songs and other content on "peer-to-peer" (P2P) networks by permitting copyright holders to use technology against pirates.
While content owners now can try to block access to intellectual property pirates, they cannot use the range of technological options that they want, chiefly because some tactics are illegal under state and federal law. Berman's bill would legalize some techniques over the protests of file-sharing advocates.
Berman, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee's intellectual property and Internet panel, represents a California district adjacent to Burbank and Hollywood -- major capitals of the entertainment industry that have long clamored for better online piracy deterrents.
Despite the passage in 1998 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, piracy continues to nag at copyright holders and businesses. The DMCA has been used to threaten suspected copyright violators, but questions about what constitutes legal sharing and illegal piracy continue to dilute the law's power.
Following the court-ordered shutdown of the popular file-sharing service Napster, P2P systems like Morpheus have become popular because they make it harder for the entertainment industry to detect copyright infringement. Two people sharing music through the Morpheus service establish connections to each others' computers instead of using a Napster-like central server.
Berman said such P2P networks should not be "cleared out," but "cleaned up."
His bill would allow copyright holders to set up decoy files and use other techno-tricks like file-blocking and redirection to throw P2P pirates off the trail, but it would forbid those holders from employing tactics that would damage or destroy pirates' own computer systems.
Destroying, crashing or damaging people's computers, software or other technology systems is illegal under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as are many of the ideas Berman is suggesting should be available to content owners - though he said that viruses should not be used as defense mechanisms.
"A copyright owner should not be allowed to damage the property of a P2P file trader or any intermediaries, including ISPs," Berman said. "(I) wouldn't want to let a particularly incensed copyright owner introduce a virus that would disable the computer from which copyrighted works are made available ... "
Ellen Stroud, spokeswoman for Morpheus' parent company StreamCast Networks, said that Berman's proposed bill would legalize tactics that currently are considered illegal because they allow online misrepresentation.
"(Berman) has called for a posse of copyright vigilantes," she said.
Howard Coble (R-N.C.), chairman of the House Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property subcommittee, said in an interview that he likes Berman's proposal, but said it could be "tweaked."
Coble also said that he is awaiting approval from the House Judiciary Committee to hold a July hearing on Internet copyright violations.
"My philosophy, and I think Howard's philosophy, is to prevent larceny and to prevent piracy," Coble said.
The Recording Industry Association of America said in a statement that it supports the Berman proposal, adding that "Internet piracy undermines the growth of legitimate online music sites and hurts all consumers in the long run."
