The record and movie industry is continuing to oppose California legislation that would prevent the organizations from using lies and misrepresentations in their attempts to fight piracy, according to a Monday L.A. Times story. The Motion Picture Association of America' torpedoing of a similar bill last summer was first reported in Wired News last year, though the MPAA refused to return calls for comment for over a month.
Now, both the Record Industry Association and the MPAA are opposing a new bill that would widely prohibit the use of false statements to acquire the names of a company's employees or customers, though law enforcement agencies would be exempt. The industry wants the legislature to exempt them from the bill and make them equivalent to law enforcement.
In late March the MPAA sent a letter (.pdf) to Senator Ellen Corbett, the legislation's sponsor, to argue the bill would hamstring its anti-piracy crackdowns:
Last year's lobbying preceded the explosion of the Hewlett-Packard scandal in which it was revealed that the Silicon Valley giant use fraud and deceit to get at the phone records of journalists, board members and employees.
The bill, as of Monday, reads like this, and any future versions can be found here. Ars Technica has some good background here.
