RIAA and movie industry want to pretext

THE RIAA and the movie industry are lobbying lawmakers in a bid to get it excused from tough laws on pretexting.

According to the LA Times, the law which is in response to the fiasco HP bought upon itself by pretending to be other people to spy on hostile journalists, is likely to first see the light of day in California.

But the RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America say the law should not apply to them as they need to use subterfuge to deal with pirates.

Spokespeople for the organisations say that they are not talking about trying to go in and get customer information.

Specifically the trade group asked that any owner of a copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret be able to use "pretexting or other investigative techniques to obtain personal information about a customer or employee" when seeking to enforce intellectual property rights.

However, consumer groups are alarmed at the RIAA's proposed changes as they do not see why the recording industry shouldn't have to follow the same laws that everyone else.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said that if the RIAA gets away with its changes it will create a loophole which is so big that nobody else has to follow the law either.

It seems that the RIAA believes that is allowed to break any law it likes if it is defending against trademark infringement.

More here. µ