Orrin Hatch
senior Senator and Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee wants to develop technology to destroy your computer if you illegally download music. Now I keep thinking that as a techie myself I really ought to make some intelligent comment about this. And I've tried. Really I have. But my not so well disciplined mind keeps going off in unintended directions.

Like I can imagine a bank of immigrant (probably illegal) male (this is relevant) laborers standing before some kind of contraption that looks like a hose with a funnel on the end. And when each gets the signal -- a big red light goes on above the hose attachment -- he urinates into the funnel and the urine is channelled directly into your personal computer, zapping the vulnerable components and, unpleasantly, wetting your lap if you happen to be using a laptop. I hope you aren't in a public place at the time.

But I suspect he has in mind a kind of Republican Star Wars model where we have satellites that can shoot some kind of small, well targeted, and powerful laser beam directly onto your computer. Ok, it might put a little hole in your roof but you shouldn't have been downloading those MP3s anyway.

It will get even more interesting if he decides on a similarly appropriate punishment for folks looking at porn.