Nevertheless, the music industry not only insisted on ignoring the tremendous marketing value of P2P file sharing and blaming P2P networks for a decline in sales but, as if their "plight" is somehow linked to national security or anti-terrorism, they even went so far as to lobby for exemptions from hacking and computer security laws to be secretly bundled with the PATRIOT Act to allow them to hack systems suspected of P2P file sharing or even initiate denial-of-service attacks against P2P network providers.
When word of that lobbying effort leaked the public backlash forced such measures to be withdrawn, but it didn't stop the lobbying efforts of the RIAA and MPAA from looking for other "creative" ways to deter file sharing. In June of 2003 Representatives Howard Berman (D-CA) and Howard Coble (R-NC) proposed a bill that would exempt copyright holders from anti-hacking laws and shield them from litigation that might result from damage incurred during such hacking and allow them to execute hacking attacks against computer systems as long as they have a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is taking place.
Jessica Litman, a Wayne State University professor and specialist in copyright law stated in a CNet.com article "I think it's wildly overreaching...copyright owners are in essence asking Congress to say that peer-to-peer file trading is such a scourge, is so bad, that stopping it is more important than enforcing any other laws that federal or state governments may have passed on computer security, privacy, fraud and so forth."
This was followed with the Hatch statement quoted earlier regarding the legality of allowing copyright holders to damage computer systems and by the RIAA beginning a rampage of using provisions of the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) to compel internet service providers (ISP's) to identify the users associated with IP addresses known to traffic illegal music files and the filing of hundreds of lawsuits against individuals. These lawsuits have been hailed as a success by the RIAA while bringing outrage from many for targeting children like the case of Brianna Lahara, a 12-year old honor student living in a New York Housing Authority apartment who settled for $2,000 last September (the fine was paid for her by a P2P industry group). Shortly after this during a Senate Judiciary committee hearing Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) asked the RIAA President Cary Sherman “Are you headed to junior high schools to round up the usual suspects?”
Not wanting to be left out of all the fun, the RIAA's motion picture cousin the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) was also exerting their lobbying muscle to push legislation. They are credited with authoring the template that has been used in many states to create what have been dubbed Super-DMCA laws. These state-level laws seek to augment and expand upon the federal DMCA law, but the wording of some parts of the legislation is very broad and seemingly makes many computer network and security technologies illegal (see Are You Breaking The Law?).