ANTI-PIRACY BILL DRAWS PRIVACY CONCERNS.

Byline: Bill Hillburg Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Copyright protectors and privacy proponents clashed Thursday over a crackdown on Internet piracy proposed by Rep. Howard Berman, D-Mission Hills.

Berman's Peer to Peer Piracy Protection Act would allow movie studios, record companies and other copyright holders to use technology to block access to free bootleg copies of their works that are posted and swapped on peer-to-peer networks, also known as file-sharing networks.

Berman told the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property that P2P networks like Kazaa and Gnutella ``plan to profit from piracy and have no intention to stop it.''

He estimated that Internet piracy is currently costing the entertainment industry $240 million a month in lost sales and artists' royalties.

Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., cited a recent study that found P2P site users were illegally downloading 2.6 billion songs and 18 million movie files per month. Most P2P users are age 12-18.

Many P2P network operators make their income by selling information about their users to advertisers and other businesses.

Berman's bill would give copyright holders exemptions from federal and state anti-hacking laws that now bar them from pursuing pirates. Under the measure, copyright holders would be required to have all anti-piracy actions, including seeking out bootleg files in personal computer files and blocking distribution, approved in advance by the Justice Department.

One popular anti-piracy tactic already in use is spoofing. With this technique, a record or film company creates tens of thousands of files that are blank or contain static, labels them with the same film or song title and uses them to flood the P2P network, making bootleg copies almost impossible to locate.

Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a group opposed to Berman's bill, said the measure could lead to abuses of privacy.

``You're shifting the onus of piracy from the content producers to the consumers,'' said Sohn, who also predicted that invasive copyright protection schemes could cut off users' Internet service or damage their home computers.

Sohn cited a recent test of a robotic computer program designed to seek out and disable stolen files. Directed to find a bootleg copy of the film ``Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone'' on a home computer, the program instead attacked a file containing a child's school report on a Harry Potter book.

Berman denied that his bill would compromise privacy or damage computers, stressing that new programs would merely halt the further copying and swapping of bootleg films and songs.

``Under this bill, a copyright owner can't send a virus to P2P pirates, can't remove any files on the pirate's computer and can't even remove files that include the pirated works,'' he said.

He also stressed that major Hollywood studios and record labels aren't the only enterprises being pillaged by pirates. He cited the plight of Skinnersisters.com, a small Los Angeles company that sells embroidery designs, materials and instruction.

Berman said co-owner Linn Skinner's ``livelihood has been destroyed by Internet piracy'' as her copyrighted works have been copied and posted on hundreds of P2P networks.

Phil Galdston, a New York-based songwriter who has created hits for Celine Dion, Vanessa Williams and other stars, testified that pirates are depriving him and his fellow artists of income, which ranges from 6 to 8 cents for every CD sold.

``My greatest achievement and my greatest asset is the catalog of over 600 songs I have amassed in 37 years of writing,'' he said. ``That asset, my personal property, is under attack and is the subject of outright theft by those who obtain it without my permission.''

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, whose Silicon Valley district is home to many P2P entrepreneurs, rejected the idea of developing more legal weapons against piracy.

``The entertainment industry should give consumers what they want, digital distribution at an affordable price,'' she said.

Hilary Rosen, chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, said her member companies are developing user-friendly, pay-per-play Internet services that will offer songs for less than $1.

But Rosen also said that the industry, which last year put the piracy site Napster out of business, can't afford to sue every new pirate that pops up on the Internet or compete with P2P network operators who are already offering thousands of songs for free.