Terry and Patrick make good points, both.

Yes, there's something fishy here. This is a publicity stunt. Berman, who is running for re-election in CAs 28th district, hasn't submitted a bill. He knows no one will support something so fundamentally stupid. Berman sits on the Courts, Internet, and IP subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. If he wanted something like this done he would sneak in a rider on some other bill. He's just looking to get his name in the paper as much as possible. You're helping.

Hollywood knows, as well as we do, that legislation banning Denial of Service attacks is just around the corner:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/...&mode=thread&tid=95

There's also the whole "DMCA prevents you from reverse-engineering access controls", etc.

Unsolicited advice, worth every penny you paid for it: I'd watch it with this "letter of marque" stuff, which (1) romanticizes the other side, and (2) appears to grant their claim that you're defending piracy.

Actual pirates in the era of big sailing ships were, by and large, seriously un-nice people, and getting them off the high seas was a solid step forward in social progress. What these people want to do isn't. Don't write their propaganda for them.