In its attempts to go after online pirates and save the precious few bucks that it loses via piracy, the U.S. entertainment industry is ready to cross all lines. In fact, it asked the Congress to allow it to use all kinds of illegal tactics and target common users.
This has been revealed in a report by Commission on the theft of American Intellectual Property. The report mentions that the entertainment industry wants permission to use malware and ransomware on the computers of users. Apparently, with the help of these nefarious and illegal software, the industry wants to track down the pirates, lock down their computers and help the law enforcement agencies to find them.
Naturally, these strategies, proposed by the U.S. entertainment industry, sound uncannily similar to those deployed in the oppressive regimes all around the globe. But then, the entertainment industry isn’t very different from the likes of those regimes.
Given its immense resources, the U.S. entertainment industry has influences policies, politicians and the Congress at large in the past. The conglomeration of media houses has tried times and again to curb the freedom of speech and expression online on the pretext of tackling the pirates.
According to the report, the entertainment industry demanded that, “While not currently permitted under U.S. law, there are increasing calls for creating a more permissive environment for active network defense that allows companies not only to stabilize a situation but to take further steps, including actively retrieving stolen information, altering it within the intruder’s networks, or even destroying the information within an unauthorized network. Additional measures go further, including photographing the hacker using his own system’s camera, implanting malware in the hacker’s network, or even physically disabling or destroying the hacker’s own computer or network.”
Naturally, the tactics proposed by the U.S. entertainment industry are disgusting and a direct threat to the constitutional rights accorded to the U.S. citizens. The question is, will the Congress sway its heads in mild disapproval or will it display the courage of criticizing MPAA and the likes for making such outrageous demands.
Source: IP Commission Report
Courtesy: Boing Boing
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