The RIAA Wants Legal Permission To Lie

The California government is considering a bill to ban the use of pretexting. This would make it illegal to use false statements or to mislead someone to find out personal information. It sounds like a good rule, but the RIAA and the MPAA does not seem to agree. They are desperately trying to convince the California Senate that this bill would disrupt the RIAA and MPAA’s strategies to catch pirates. As a result, both of these trade organizations want immunity from this rule.

According to the RIAA, investigators pretend to be someone else in order to receive bootlegged CDs or to find out more about the people involved in online piracy rings. The RIAA’s executive vice president for anti-piracy explains the situation as, “Basically, we want criminals to feel comfortable that who they’re dealing with is probably some other criminal and let us in on what’s going on.” He goes on to promise that pretexting will never and has never been used by the RIAA to receive information about a customer.

The main question here is what defines a “suspected pirate” ? This term could be used so broadly. So basically the RIAA is asking to be able to lie and receive personal information from anyone they want, and they are asking the public to trust that they will only use this method when necessary. The RIAA and the MPAA are asking to be the only two industries allowed to have this ability. According to Chris Hoofnagle, attorney at UC Berkeley’s Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic, “…there was no rational reason to exempt one industry from pretexting laws, especially when information can be legally obtained through subpoenas and other means.”

The MPAA’s and the RIAA’s objections are not expected to have any effect on whether the bill is or is not passed, but I found it surprising that these two industries would even ask for this ability. By granting them their wishes, it seems like the public is just asking for the permission to be abused. If a couple industries are allowed to use these tactics, why would this not push other industries to demand the same permission?