Entertainment Industry Still Wants Special Loopholes In Anti-Pretexting Laws

from the how-it-goes dept

Mon, Apr 9th 2007 8:19am — Mike Masnick

While the FCC has already come out with its own anti-pretexting rules, various states are still trying to tackle the issue with state-level laws. California has been making a big effort to bring back an earlier anti-pretexting law that got shot down prior to the whole HP-pretexting fiasco thanks to efforts by the MPAA, who insisted that pretexting-like tactics were necessary to catch people engaged in file sharing. You would think that, given how much publicity pretexting and other types of identity theft scams have gotten recently, the entertainment industry would recognize that this issue was something of an electric "third rail" to stay away from. However, no one ever said entertainment industry execs had much in the way of common sense. John writes in to let us know that they're back at it, trying to block California's latest anti-pretexting law, again claiming they need to be able to deceive people in order to track down those engaged in file sharing. The execs in these industries really do seem to think that the law is written for their own companies' benefit, don't they? Luckily, the politicians pushing this law say they don't see any reason to modify the existing proposal just to put in a special loophole for some special interests.

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9 Comments

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Gotta Get, 9 Apr 2007 @ 9:06am

I'm Kinda impressed......Kinda
I Want to shake the hand of those politicians, they seem to be doing something to protect the people not corporations.
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Jim, 9 Apr 2007 @ 9:18am

The only reason these politicos are doing this is because the studios haven't given them enough money yet for their reelection campaigns. Once they tell the bank to wire the check into the politicians bank accounts this will be deader then the pope's sex life.
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WoW, 9 Apr 2007 @ 9:29am

so our own government is not a communist state after all!!!???
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- bt garner, 9 Apr 2007 @ 9:58am
  
  Re:
  No, in a communist state, the government owns the businesses, not the other way around
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  - Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2007 @ 10:11am
    
    Re: Re:
    In communist US, Government buys you!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2007 @ 9:39am

I think that the MPAA and RIAA should be able to ignore all U.S. laws and hire Charles Bronson to stop file sharing. If that doesn't work, bring in the tactical nukes!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Apr 2007 @ 10:16am

So, police are supposed to identify themselves when they do nvestigations and they are asked who they are, but MPAA and RIAA want to be able to lie in the same circumstances to get information to incriminate you. WTF?!?!?!?
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Brad Eleven, 9 Apr 2007 @ 10:42am

Breaking the law to enforce the law
It's called fascism. Look into it.

Machiavelli expressed the cycle as chaos-> despotism -> democracy -> despotism -> chaos ... (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=230039&cid=18664513).

I can't decide--if the decision were mine, anyway--which period I'd prefer to live in.
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Emceay, 9 Apr 2007 @ 12:01pm

Really? You're that discontent with the age of digital pirates, limiteless information, baseless and virtually infinite currency? There's so many loopholes in this era that I can already tell I'll miss when I'm a geezer.
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