In Politech today, Congressman Berman (through an aide) offers a defense of the proposed Berman-Coble bill. (This bill would legalize certain forms of hacking by copyright owners against users of file-sharing systems.)
The gist of the defense is that the bill would only shelter copyright holders from liability to the extent that they were actually preventing redistribution of their copyrighted works, but that any impairment of unrelated activities or legal file sharing would still be liable as under current law.
If that’s actually a correct reading of the bill, then the bill might not be as bad as people say. But it’s far from clear that that is the correct reading of the bill.
