Orrin Hatch Contracts Foot in Mouth Disease

Posted on June 20, 2003

Senators and congressmen with no programming experience and little understanding of either intellectual property law, our Consitution's prohibition against unlawful takings and/or the amazingly stupid things kids do on the computer when they are unsupervised would do well to learn from the unfolding Orrin Hatch debacle. I am, of course, referring to Senator Hatch's outrageous comments endorsing the destruction of any computer whose owner illegally downloads a music file. The music industry has been lobbying hard to get Congress to pass some Draconian penalties against anyone who uses Kazaa or other Napster-like file swapping services. Now they want to destory someone's computer with a deadly virus if they -- even accidentally -- illegally download software. It's the new "Two Wrongs Make a Right" theory of legislation, I suppose.

Let's explore a hypothetical scenario, shall we? Your stupid high-school age student (who is currently suffering from testosterone poisoning of the worst description) illegally downloads the latest Brittany Spears single (out this fall, in case you are not keeping up with pop culture). Under Senator Hatch's scenario, your computer will be destroyed. Your Turbo Tax program with this year's taxes -- gone. Didn't back up that important work project? Too bad, it's gone too, along with your prescription lists, all your emails, your Excel files, and the draft of that novel you've been meaning to finish. Oh, and you'll need to buy a new computer, because this one is toast.

But here's the really great part of this story. It turns out that Senator Hatch is using pirated software on his own website! Yes, that's right -- under his own rules, it's time to destroy his computer and take down his website. According to Wired, an unemployed programmer began clicking around Senator Hatch's website, after reading and becoming incensed by the Senator's comments. What he found was software piracy, pure and simple. The webmaster apparently has been running an unlicensed JavaScript menu system developed by Milonic Solutions. What's even worse is that someone removed Milonic's copyright notice from the source code.

So, Senator Hatch, before you shoot off your mouth again on an important legal issue, perhaps you should take the time to actually research the issue first. Just a thought....