Tuesday, January 16, 2007

President Bush Signs Anti-Pretexting Bill Into Law

President Bush today signed into law a bill that outlaws Pretexting, or the act of posing as someone else to discover personal information. This is a technique often used by the MPAA to find out from a given ISP the personal information of alleged filesharers.

Pretexting began to come into the public light after the investigation by and eventual resignation of Patricia Dunn, a chairwoman of HP. The scandal that ensued was enough to drive media acceptance of the story, and from that point this bill was introducted (and passed) in the house in February 2006.

As was expected, there was a large backlash when this bill fully cleared congress in December, with the MPAA arguing that it needed the ability to use pretexting "...to stop illegal downloading." Lobbiests paid by the MPAA were confirmed to have been lobbying against the bill.

(via arstechnica)

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