RIAA, MPAA, ‘pretexting’ move
p2pnet.net news:- Last December, “That Hollywood routinely uses ‘pretexting,’ the shady information gathering technique which landed Hewlett-Packard in so much deep water, has been confirmed,” p2pnet posted, going on, “The Big Six studios, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, have used their financial and political resources to have a California bill meant to stop companies and individuals from using pretexting, cancelled.”
Alongside them was Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).
Now, “The RIAA proposed changes to the piracy bill that raised alarms among consumer advocates,” says the Los Angeles Times. “The trade group asked that any owner of a copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret be able to use ‘pretexting or other investigative techniques to obtain personal information about a customer or employee’ when seeking to enforce intellectual property rights.”
The legislation, “could be construed to prevent MPAA’s anti-piracy department and contract investigators, who gather evidence to bring legal actions against criminals who counterfeit and steal motion pictures and other works, from employing certain long-employed techniques to obtain information,” the movie association wrote in a letter obtained by The Times.
“The association also said those techniques ‘could include posing or portraying an individual personality as part of an ongoing investigation’.”
But there’s no rational reason to exempt one industry from pretexting laws, especially when information can be legally obtained through subpoenas and other means, the story has Chris Hoofnagle, a privacy attorney at UC Berkeley’s Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic, saying.
“The whole point of these pretexting bills is to rein in private law enforcement that is not accountable to the public or to normal rules,” Hoofnagle said. “There isn’t much sense in allowing an entire industry to play with a different rule book.”
Also See:
p2pnet – Hollywood defends ‘pretexting’, December 1, 2006
Los Angeles Times – Recording, movie industries lobby for permission to deceive, April 7, 2007
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April 9th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
“obtain personal information about a customer or employee”
Does this involve tricking 10 year old children ?
April 9th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
but of course =)