Hatchet Job

For years, scholars interested in principled copyright policies and the revitalization of the public domain have regarded Orrin Hatch as, if not a friend, an example. Lawrence Lessig titled one of the chapters in The Future of Ideas "What Orrin Understands" in acknowledgment of Hatch's apparently enlightened approach to I.P. issues.

Well, those days are over.

This excerpt from a Washington Post article, effectively undermines all citation of Hatch as in any way enlightened on I.P. matters:

During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws.

"No one is interested in destroying anyone's computer," replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can't.

"I'm interested," Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone's computer "may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights."

The senator 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.

Hatch is, apparently, comfortable with the possibility that a teenager using Mom's loaner laptop from work to download Eminem tunes could leave that laptop a smoking heap. And who, pray, would be left to devise the enforcement system? The content industries? The FBI (aren't they busy hunting terrorists)?The same local police who have lost their jobs due to budget cuts?

There are other issues that ought to be at the top of any voter's list, but my sense is that I.P. issues is, at the very least, an index of whether a particular elected official is interested in representing his constituents or the interests of corporate America. My hope is that people will remember Hatch's interruption, and will factor absurd stances like Hatch's into their decisions when they vote.