Delicious irony: Orrin Hatch: Software Pirate?. A few days ago this guy claims copyright owners should have the right to destroy the computers (as in, make the hardware explode) of individuals downloading copyright material. Now it comes to light that his website uses copyright code and is in breach of the terms and conditions of use. So, is he down in the server room with a mallet? I suspect not. Will he learn from this? I suspect not. Is Senator Hatch doing this out of the goodness of his heart? No. He's a composer who earns a lot of money from royalties. To be fair; it seems his comments - while initially serious - are being taken more as a provocation to work on the problem and less as a real plan of action.
Even if a method of destroying computers was devised; how would you guard against destroying legit users' computers? The death penalty has sent innocent people to their deaths... even when playing with people's lives nobody's found a foolproof method of avoiding mistakes. The record industry has already broken the computer hardware of legitimate users and they didn't give a shit (remember the copy protection that broke Macintosh CD-ROM drives?). They'd happily do this if they could; and they wouldn't care about the innocent victims. Plus, how easy would it be to destroy someone's machine for no reason? "I thought they were using my hardware!" Well we can't prove it now, can we? So what's to say you just didn't like them?
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