The Black Book of Hacking

CCIA: copyright wiretaps are Hollywood's "PATRIOT Act" Yesterday's White House wish list of new intellectual property laws focused on things like counterfeit medicines, but it also included proposals to extend wiretaps into copyright cases and to ensure that illegal streaming video is a felony. A DC trade group representing companies like AMD, Facebook, Oracle, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft today objected loudly to the plan, saying that legitimate concerns about counterfeiting have been "hijacked to create draconian proposals to alleviate the content industry of the burden of protecting its own interest using its own extensive resources." And that was just the beginning. Some in Congress and the White House have apparently decided that no price is too high to pay to kowtow to Big Content's every desire, including curtailing civil liberties by expanding wiretapping of electronic communications. That sound you hear is Obama "IP czar" Victoria Espinel scratching Black's name off her Christmas card list.