U.S.News
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Orrin Hatch
Senator
Date of Birth: March 22, 1934
Place of Birth: Pittsburgh, Pa.
Through word and deed, Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah, has demonstrated that a member of Congress can work to pass meaningful, bipartisan legislation without compromising his core principles and strongly held ideological convictions.
I certainly would not expect Senator Orrin Hatch to standup in a respected environment and yell, “YOU LIE”. But it was a real surprise to hear this leader’s solution to the “illegal downloading of music”.
Freerepublic said:
Powerful Senator Endorses Destroying Computers of Illegal Downloaders (Orrin Hatch)
AP 6/17/2003 | Ted Bridis
Posted on 6/17/03 by Jean S
WASHINGTON (AP) – The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday he favors developing new technology to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Internet.
The surprise remarks by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, during a hearing on copyright abuses represent a dramatic escalation in the frustrating battle by industry executives and lawmakers in Washington against illegal music downloads.
During a discussion on methods to frustrate computer users who illegally exchange music and movie files over the Internet, Hatch asked technology executives about ways to damage computers involved in such file trading. Legal experts have said any such attack would violate federal anti-hacking laws.
“No one is interested in destroying anyone’s computer,” replied Randy Saaf of MediaDefender Inc., a secretive Los Angeles company that builds technology to disrupt music downloads. One technique deliberately downloads pirated material very slowly so other users can’t.
“I’m interested,” Hatch interrupted. He said damaging someone’s computer “may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights.”
The senator acknowledged Congress would have to enact an exemption for copyright owners from liability for damaging computers. He endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, “then destroy their computer.”…
And since some authors have, defined powerful politicians, as CZARS, could Senator Hatch be called the “BLOWING UP COMPUTERS” CZAR?
And, as strange as it may seem – some time after the expressed desire to blow-up America’s computers came the means by which that could be achieved: exploding laptop batteries.
So, if they couldn’t blow those offending computers up using “electrons” flowing down the Internet – perhaps laptop batteries could blow up the laptops.
Is America lowering the leadership bar?
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Tags: best leaders, czars, exploding laptop batteries, illegal downloading of music, joe biden, new technology, orrin hatch
