p2pnet - rss feed: Orrin Hatch INDUCE Act intro’d
p2pnet.net News:- Senator Orrin ‘Terminator’ Hatch’s INDUCE Act, another Hollywood anti-p2p law being rammed home behind the spectre of child pornography, has now been formally introduced
Short for ‘Inducement Devolves into Unlawful Child Exploitation,’ it’s a, “horrible public policy that will chill the development, if enacted, of not only peer to peer technology, but wonderful new information tools yet to be devised,” says P2P United’s Adam Eisgrau.
"The odds of any new bill becoming law are slim, as Congress has only 35 working days scheduled before the fall elections," says Reuters here, going on, "But the bill has powerful backers, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Sen. Tom Daschle, the Democratic Senate leader, and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee."
“The logic is that P2P applications inevitably lead to exploitation of children,” writes law profesor Susan Crawford on her blog here.
“It’s the Hollings Bill by other means, says EFF intellectual property lawyer Fred von Lohmann, going on thaat INDUCE is, “an over-reaching new form of indirect liability that will force technology companies of all kinds to ‘ask permission’ before innovating for fear of ruinous litigation if they don’t”.
It, “furthers Hatch’s exploitation of children-centered concerns in his quest to appease deep-pocketed entertainment companies,” says ARS Technica’s Ken Fisher here. “In short, the act seeks to hold liable anything and everything that could be used to infringe copyrights. Burn the VCR, burn the photocopiers, folks.
“For the children, of course.”
Analysts have already warned strongly this act could easily also apply to TiVo, your VCR, your CD-burner, or any of the other exciting technological developments that most of the honest people out there would like to use, Fisher points out, adding:
“It’s really amazing: if a device or application can be used for infringement, it makes the producers of such devices liable, even if it’s the end users committing the violation. Such a law would virtually eliminate a whole range of technological innovations, as companies would be afraid to produce anything that anyone could manage to somehow use to infringe copyrights. In Hatch’s world, ‘intentionlly inducing’ is akin to merely knowing that infringement could happen.”
In an earlier story, we mistakenly reported it has been passed. We apologise.
June 23rd, 2004 at 7:38 pm
Wouldn’t it be easier to just ban all cameras and photographic equipment?
June 23rd, 2004 at 8:09 pm
From a fact sheet by the Home Recording Rights Coalition (www.HRRC.org) –
„« Inducement of infringement already is a part of the test for contributory infringement. The main effect of adding a separate, broad provision based on ¡§acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement¡¨ is to allow a different outcome on the same facts, even of the Betamax case itself.
„« If the Inducing Infringement Of Copyrights Act is enacted as proposed, all kinds of legitimate products will be at risk because the Betamax doctrine no longer will be a valuable defense.
„« HRRC appreciates the efforts of the drafters in adding a provision that says the bill does not enlarge or diminish the ¡§doctrines¡¨ of contributory or vicarious infringement. However, by creating a new and separate doctrine of ¡§induced¡¨ infringement, the bill effectively renders these doctrines irrelevant as defenses — just as the DMCA effectively made irrelevant the ¡§fair use¡¨ defense by leaving it alone in other contexts.
„« As a result, the bill will likely have a broad, dramatic and negative effect on the development and introduction of new products, and to anyone creating and marketing them. Just as the ¡§Hollings Bill¡¨ in the last Congress had some laudable objectives but swept much too broadly, this initiative also threatens innovative consumer devices, software, and home networks.
„« The bill is aimed at over-ruling a lower court decision that has been under review by the Court of Appeals for more than half a year.
„« The Judiciary Committee should hold a full hearing to consider all the implications of this legislation, from all points of view and all interests potentially affected, before making such a fundamental change to the substance and scope of the copyright law.
June 24th, 2004 at 3:05 am
Cameras, photographic equipment…but wait! I was in a museum the other day and a student was painting a reproduction of a Picasso painting…do we have to get rid of canvas and paint too? Or, I could copy a passage from a book in a notebook, so I guess paper and pens are out. Well, hell, if I whistle a song I heard on the radio and someone hears me and starts whistling it too…is that inducing copyright infringment too?
Starling
July 7th, 2004 at 6:19 am
In theory, this could bring down the entertainment industry as we know it.
Here’s my reasoning. RCA cables, which are commonly used to connect video devices to TVs and audio devices to amplifiers, can also be used to connect CD players to tape decks and VCRs to DVD Recorders. Would these cables be effectively outlawed? How then would we connect our entertainment appliances?