I really don’t like Orrin Hatch. I’ve considered him a dangerous slimeball since before his anti-Microsoft jihad on behalf of Novell and friends. Now he’s on an anti-computer-file-trader jihad on behalf of the RIAA. He recently indicated that it might be ok for copyright holders to destroy the computers of suspected copyright violators.

What a jerk!

So it was nice to see James Lileks get Hatch into his cross-hairs today:

I’ll just say that I think he’s made mostly of molded plastic, there’s a pullstring in his back, and the RIAA fingerprints are all over the big white ring. I won’t listen to any of these guys blather about computers or the Internet until they have demonstrated on film that they can install some RAM, burn a CD (“shiny side down, you say?”), tell me what HTTP and URL stand for, prove they know how to get the source code for a webpage, and know better than to click “Yes” when asked if the computer should always trust data from Gator Corporation.

His remarks about remotely destroying computers that download copyrighted material is just grampa blather. The computers are stealing music! The cars are frightening the horses! The Kaiser took my dog!

Read the whole thing. In fact, read Lileks every day. It’s a pleasure.