MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill

A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive "pretexting" ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned.

The bill, SB1666, was written by state Sen. Debra Bowen, and would have barred investigators from making "false, fictitious or fraudulent" statements or representations to obtain private information about an individual, including telephone calling records, Social Security numbers and financial information. Victims would have had the right to sue for damages.

The bill won approval in three committees and sailed through the state Senate with a 30-0 vote. Then, according to Lenny Goldberg, a lobbyist for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the measure encountered unexpected, last-minute resistance from the Motion Picture Association of America.

"The MPAA has a tremendous amount of clout and they told legislators, 'We need to pose as someone other than who we are to stop illegal downloading,'" Goldberg said.

Ira Rothken, a prominent technology lawyer defending download search engine TorrentSpy against a movie industry copyright suit, says he didn't know about the lobbying, but can guess why the MPAA got involved. Rothken is suing (.pdf) the MPAA for allegedly paying a hacker $15,000 to hack into TorrentSpy's e-mail accounts.

"It doesn't surprise me that the MPAA would be against bills that protect privacy, and the MPAA has shown that they are willing to pay lots of money to intrude on privacy," Rothken said.