17 June 2003

Senator Hatch Wishes to Destroy Filetrader PCs

The jackass of the day pin goes to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Orrin Hatch, who stated that "he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet."
"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."

The senator, a composer who earned $18,000 last year in song writing royalties, acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."

"If we can find some way to do this without destroying their machines, we'd be interested in hearing about that," Hatch said. "If that's the only way, then I'm all for destroying their machines. If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize" the seriousness of their actions, he said.

Another conservative who claims to admire limited government but really is just another tool eager to employ coercive power of government to help corporate interests stomp all over the U.S. Constitution. In Hatch's view, large companies should be given free reign to destroy the private property of U.S. citizens they suspect are infringing on their copyrights - without any hint of due process or legal proceedings whatsoever.

Not surprising, Senator Hatch was a sponsor of the DMCA. That action alone should have ended his career. How Republicans can lie and say they represent freedom from government intrusion is beyond me.

Comments

John Galt did not have to pull back the government man's jacket to expose the hidden gun--the thugs become so arrogant that they brandish it themselves!