Autonemesis

Looks like the AP has redacted the original paragraph. It's got something less provocative now, but the sentiment is still there.

I'd suggest pirating Hatch's music in protest, but given the choice between listening to Hatch sing and having my PC destroyed, I'm not sure the latter is so bad after all.

simian

Could you e-mail him pirated songs?

Simian

Jat

He doesn't actually sing the songs. He's a composer. I don't know why he is so upset for. I've heard his songs, they aren't worth pirating. They're suppose to be spiritual and patriotic. If he were a true patriot than he would give them away for free instead of trying to make money off of people's patriotism.

Gringo

Schools are struggling to keep enough computers in the classrooms now. This can be a new hobby for the students: dowloading pirated songs in order to screw up the schools' computers. Much more fun than throwing pencils in the ceiling.

lpetrich

It's not clear what Senator Hatch is talking about; there are several possibilities.

A cracker-style attack that causes the computer's network drivers to become unusable, or even to cause a crash.

A cracker-style exploit, enabling:

Deletion of the offending files.
Erasure of the disks.
Frying the computer's motherboard or something comparable.

Having Microsoft or Apple install backdoors in their OSes that enable some or all of these things.

Having an ISP throttle or deny service to that computer.


On the various options:

The ISP option seems rather obvious, since broadband and much dialup access is concentrated in a few large companies, which means only a few business managements to deal with. Also, allowing such throttling or shutdowns may seem like a reasonable price to pay for regulatory favors, like being able to price-gouge or exclude competition.

The backdoor option is likewise helped by there being only two mass-market OS vendors.

The cracking option depends on the amount of vulnerability a home system would have; I'm not sure about that, since most cracking efforts are directed at "real" servers, rather than home users.

Of the possible actions, throttling and denial of Internet access are the least drastic.

Next comes deletion of the offending files.

Erasure of disks would be rather difficult when the OS is running; one may settle for deletion of all but absolutely-necessary OS files. Alternatively, one can load into the BIOS some instructions to erase all the disks, and then reboot.

Which suggests that one could erase the BIOS and then try to reboot; rebooting won't happen, but the disks will be intact.

Frying the motherboard would be rather extreme; however, I'm not sure how failsafe most motherboards are. I recall something from somewhere about someone who had fried a disk drive by making its read-write head do an excessive amount of seeking.

Elvithriel

Linux, the safe OS

Cicero

Say HELLOOOOOOOO, Count Zero.

Orrin Hatch, the Senator from Exxon, should be thrown in the harbor in a sack full of cats.

Normus

Though I would think if he puts into law the ok to fry offending computers, there would be several people out there who would like to see just how secure his own computer system is. I would think he may want to consider leaving any computer system he has unpluged from the internet. Not that i would sugest anyone do that sort of thing, but i think you all know it would happen.

lpetrich

Sure, but I wonder when Linux will be declared a threat to intellectual property on the ground that it does not come with a way of disabling it on suspicion of intellectual-property violations.

Yggdrasill

If they created a backdoor in the operating systems, you can be sure that there would be a crack available within five hours of it's widespread detection. At least if the Mictosoft and Apple didn't make a real effort, if they made a real effort, several days may elapse before the crack is available. I'm not worried.