In my previous blog posts I mention a lot of different ways in which the music and entertainment industry is trying to protect their intellectual property. These range from providing a better user experience to straightforward banning of websites which infringe copyright. Late last month, BoingBoing.net spotted something in the report submitted to the US government by the Commission on the Theft of Intellectual Property which could be considered as one of the more… “unique” methods in protecting intellectual property.
The idea behind the proposal is essentially a malware system would be installed on a system and to determine whether the user was a pirate (It is unclear in the report how it would do so). If the malware system does determine the user to be a pirate, the user’s entire system is locked down and can only be unlocked if the user turns himself into the police.
Aside from this method being a potential violation of privacy, the list of complications and headaches this could potentially cause everyday users is almost endless. I have this horrid vision of myself trying to load up one of my old CDs onto my computer only to have the installed malware lock my computer down because I’m playing MP3 files from a source it does not recognise. Once again, it seems like the music and entertainment industry are just throwing a bunch of ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks.
Link to BoingBoing article:
