Our hero, the MPAA, opposes a ban on fraud

An anti-pretexting bill in the California legislature was defeated earlier this year due to the strong influence of the MPAA. The MPAA claimed that a ban on pretexting would interfere with their "anti-piracy" efforts.

You may remember "pretexting" as doublespeak for gaining personal information under false pretenses. The most recent and infamous use of this tactic was the HP Board Scandal.

At least someone is fighting the good fight, however. From the Wired article:

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. "I do think there needs to be better laws in place that would deter such conduct and think that it would probably be useful if our elected officials would not be intimidated by the MPAA when trying to pass laws to protect privacy."