Keep Your Hands Off of My PC

by JRoyale

2002-03-02 19:23:01

Power Corrupts

In a screeching rant that would make any PDJ author proud, Thom Greene of The Register rips into Senator Hollings (D - SC) and his ludicrous "dog and pony" SSSCA hearings Hollings held early this week.

As most PDJ readers know, any PC that would be legal under the SSSCA would be rendered to nothing more then an expensive VCR/CD that crashed on a regular basis (just to remind you that Microsoft Windows was Inside.) Any sort of real and effective anti-copy protection requires the hardware and the operating system to distrust and disallow all but "validated" programs, applications and content. Under the SSSCA, if some byte hasn't been blessed by one of the few privileged multi-national corporations allowed to bless bytes, you can bet your sweet ass that "your" PC will choke on it. Your PC will probably also be programmed to alert your local police department that you've been practicing unsafe computing. And Linux will never, ever qualify as an SSSCA approved product.

An Intel VP, Leslie Vadasz, echoed this thought, in an uncharacteristic moment of sanity in Sen. Hollings' private little hearing room - which is really more of country club, where only the most generous donors are permitted membership and allowed to speak. And for his efforts, Sen. Hollings berated Vadasz for not marching to the corporate drum. Or at least Sen. Hollings' corporate drum.

First elected in 1966, Sen. Hollings is rapidly setting himself up to become the poster boy of Senatorial term limits. Oblivious to the technical revolution of the past 40 years and obviously in the pocket of his corporate masters, it appears that Hollings is willing to destroy the personal freedoms of millions of computer using Americans, along with permanently crippling US technical leadership in this field, all for just the few shekels the MPAA and RIAA tossed into to his re-election basket.

I'd tell you to write to Senator Hollings and inform him just what a bad idea the SSSCA is, but it is clear that Sen. Hollings thinks that anyone that wants to copy a file or write a program or just use a computer in an "unapproved" fashion is a criminal that should be heavily fined and then locked up. So instead, I urge you to join the EFF and fight for your rights.

Those evil bastards in the House and Senate might have slipped the DMCA over on us when we weren't watching, but not this time... not this time. And we certainly might lose fight against the SSSCA, but at least we'll be watching and protesting. I certainly plan to make myself as annoying as possible to those that support the SSSCA and won't be watching the SSSCA become law with any shred of probity or dignity remaining.

Check it out yourself

aaron@pigdog.org