Rogues Gallery-Howard Berman

Howard Berman

Howard "in your pocket" Berman, the MPAA and RIAA's sockpuppet. He does their bidding, even when he doesn't know what it means to the American public, the course of copyright, or the long term affects. This year Howard Berman has collected over $186,000 in campaign donations for this years election from the Movie, Music and Television companies. (Opensecrets.org). His recent bill that would allow MPAA and the RIAA to hack into your computer and delete or modfy files without fear of retribution is the latest example of his cowtowing to the industry. The bill would allow for no criminal penalties, requires no probable cause and no warrant, but even worse it allows a business in the private sector to do this with only a seven day notification to the Attorney Generals office of what they intend to do and how. They won't need his approval, nor will the AG ever be required to reveal what they did. They can institute a Denial of Service Attack with no criminal penalties, modify or delete files, and they have no responsibility to inform the person being attacked, and the only recourse the individual has is if they can prove monetary damages in excess of $250.00.

This bill in effect allows vigilante justice (real or imagined). Given the abuses of the RIAA membership toward their own artists, Do you really want them to have this sort of power? No warrant, no legal oversight, to perform private searches on your computer. How do you determine if a file is illegal or legal? I might just own that Britney CD that I have the MP3's for. I might just own that DVD of Spiderman. This bill assumes you are guilty until proven innocent. Perhaps Mr Berman should get his nose out of Mr Valenti's rearend and get a clue.