Anti-pretexting law on the way
p2pnet.net News:- Bad news for Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, we posted at the beginning of the month, going on:
“Legislation aimed at making it a federal crime in America to use fake telephone calls to get private information could be on the way. The Senate passed legislation last night that would make it a federal crime to obtain a person’s telephone records without permission, an act known as pretexting.”
The news just got worse for Hollywood, and other sectors which have been using phony phone calls to gather information.
“The measure, which was approved by unanimous consent last night and is similar to a bill passed earlier in the House, imposes a fine of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to 10 years for duping telephone companies into divulging the calling records of private individuals,” says The New York Times. “The penalties can go up under special circumstances, like cases involving domestic abuse.”
Why should the Big Six movie studios care? Because pretexting is one of the methods they use to get information on people they want to sue, or have arrested, for unconnected, but always linked, counterfeiting and file sharing, both of which they claim are ruining the movie industry.
However, Hollywood is itself responsible for much of the illegality, for instance when insiders upload screeners, or sell them to people who are;t supposed to have them and an example of this came when the MPAA announced Johnny Ray Gasca, said to have used a camcorder to copy a movie in a cinema, was jailed for seven years for copyright infringement.
However, not long after Gasca was sentenced, Los Angeles cousins John Acas and Sheryl Demesa were arrested for allegedly mishandling Oscar “screeners”.
Demesa worked at an LA accounting firm which received copies of films for members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, says the Los Angeles Times, going on, “Demesa allegedly took the movies, lending them to Acas.”
Meanwhile, support for the new legislation follows the spying scandal when Hewlett-Packard, “eager to ferret out purported leaks to journalists from within its board, used private detective firms to retrieve phone records of directors, managers and journalists,” says the NYT, continuing companies convicted face fines of up to $500,000.
“The legislation includes penalties and a prison sentence of up to 10 years for individuals who sell or buy phone records knowing the lists were obtained through deceptive means,” says the story. “Passage, which came just days before the conclusion of the Republican-led Congress, is a victory for privacy advocates and regular phone users concerned about the confidentiality of their records.”
At HP, “regulatory filings this summer revealed that the company chairwoman, Patricia C. Dunn, had authorized a broad investigation into the source of embarrassing boardroom leaks to the news media,” adds the story.
“On Thursday, the company said it would pay $14.5 million to settle a civil lawsuit brought by the California attorney general, Bill Lockyer.
“Detectives hired by the company employed pretexting techniques to obtain the phone records of company board members, employees and at least nine journalists who covered the company.”
The lion’s share of the settlement money will go not towards a “privacy and piracy” treasure chest, “to help state and local law enforcement fight privacy and intellectual property violations” with the remainder ear-marked for damages and to pay for the investigation.
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
we posted – MPAA nails ’screener’ man, December 6, 2006
The New York Times – Senate Passes Bill to Criminalize Pretexting, December 9, 2006
Los Angeles Times – 2 arrested in piracy of Oscar ’screener’ films, December 6, 2006
lion’s share – HP ‘privacy and piracy’ fund, December 8, 2006
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