Are they serious?

I get up on a nice sunday morning and find out that the RIAA wants to hack into my computer; you know, put an unauthorized program on my computer that scans the hard disk for files it feels are illegal and erases them, maybe locks up on me when I try to run iTunes or something, and possibly throttle my internet connection which is clearly used for nefarious purposes. Of course there is a Slashdot discussion on this too.

There is this gem:

Among the more benign approaches being developed is one program, considered a Trojan horse rather than a virus, that simply redirects users to Web sites where they can legitimately buy the song they tried to download.

That’s one of the more “benign” approaches? Running unauthorized code on my computer that tells me exactly how I should be using my internet connection. But wait, there’s more:

A more malicious program, dubbed “freeze,” locks up a computer system for a certain duration ? minutes or possibly even hours ? risking the loss of data that was unsaved if the computer is restarted. It also displays a warning about downloading pirated music. Another program under development, called “silence,” scans a computer’s hard drive for pirated music files and attempts to delete them. One of the executives briefed on the silence program said that it did not work properly and was being reworked because it was deleting legitimate music files, too.

I can’t even begin to describe the problems with this.

Apparently there are companies such as Overpeer and MediaDefender (warning: major propaganda behind that link) who are developing this software to sell to the RIAA and others. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about with script kiddies and malicious crackers who do this stuff just for fun. Now I have to deal with well funded efforts with several employees. Got forbid some of this code leaks out.

Luckily I’ve got an OS X mac, which is better designed to prevent this intrusiveness and is also much less likely to be targeted.

Of course most of this is clearly illegal and I am surprised the RIAA is even considering doing this in such a sue happy culture. It isn’t just a bunch of kids and twenty year olds who are going to be pissed off. What happens when a major law partner looses his work due to his kid’s adventures on Kazaa? Or what about the network providers who don’t want their pipelines throttled or monitored? According to the article Verizon is already expressing concern.

Not that the RIAA isn’t trying to get laws passed that allows this stuff. Not that these laws are likely to be vague or open to abuse or anything.