kuleiana's Journal: So if the RIAA gets antsy...

...they can just "hack" my computer and “pay” the consequences, right away! That is what many people, who are finally P.O.ed about being sued for listening to music, are going to say. I came across this interesting little bit of legislation while trying to accumulate data for my lawsuit against 101things.com for illegally using my database to run their web site, for which they subsequently neglected to pay.

For the full article, please check out netCoalition's web site for information. So, speaking of extractions, here's a legal one, or you can read the M$ Word document link here.

The members of NetCoalition firmly believe that existing law already provides more than adequate protection for producers of databases. In fact, the database community, which includes Internet companies, has repeatedly demonstrated that existing variety of federal and state laws, including federal copyright law, federal anti-hacking prohibitions, and a variety of state contract and tort laws, are more than sufficient to protect their work from those who would engage in unlawful uses of their materials. For example, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. 1030, allows a web site operator to obtain injunctive relief and an award of damages against a person who extracts, without authorization, even one fact from its web site provided that the operator spends $5,000 on damage assessment.

As I see it, it does not matter what exactly is in the database, but who assembled it, who cared for it, and what sort of a data structure it maintains. How else are we supposed to care for and protect the only thing which is truly our own, our minds, and the extension of it that is a computer database.

Aloha, Adam