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RIAA Sends Letter to Senate Supporting INDUCE Act
The Importance of writes "Slashdot has discussed the INDUCE Act before (and here and here). The act would make 'intentionally inducing' infringement a crime, but defines inducing so broadly that all sorts of technology is threatened. A little over a week ago, tech companies and civil rights groups sent a letter to some senators asking for hearings on the bill. A couple of days ago, the RIAA responded with their own letter sent to all 100 senators. There is also an abridged and annotated version of the RIAA letter. LawMeme has put together an index to INDUCE Act analysis."
S. 2560, introduced by Senators Hatch, Leahy, Boxer, L. Graham and both Majority Leader Frist and Democratic Leader Daschle - is timely, warranted legislation. We urge you to support it. It is intended to target bad actors only - those who have built business models to get away with stealing the creative work of predominantly American artists. The bill finds the right balance to protect both technology AND content innovators.
I *love* that they use the word "stealing". No matter what spin they try to put on this issue, spreading and copying music is not stealing.
Four of the top ten downloaded applications on the Internet are P2P programs operated by companies who purposefully set them up to be used for illegal conduct. Popular for sure... but lawbreaking nonetheless.
Oh, I just LOVE this. Yes, BitTorrent (just took over as the leader in P2P traffic) was created for illegal use. I could see Kazaa or Napster, but BitTorrent, no, I just don't believe that.
But it has been hijacked by some unscrupulous operators who have constructed a business model predicated on the taking of property financed by my member companies.
As far as I am aware, BitTorrent has no true business model. I got the software legally and without cost.
We take profits from sales - when we're good and lucky enough to get them - and plow money back into the search for that next great talent who will thrill music fans around the globe.
When you're lucky? Give me a fucking break. You support the consolidation of radio and other music distribution networks so you have tight control on who listens and how they listen. Perhaps if radio and music distribution wasn't controlled by you and your existance wasn't backed and supported by the government (who should have broken you up years ago) I would believe you.
In 2000, the top ten hits sold 60 million units in the U.S. Seven of the ten sold more than 5 million units each; every one of them sold at least 3 million units. Then the slide kicked in. Last year, in 2003, the top ten hits were cut almost in half, to 33 million units. Just two of the ten sold more than 5 million units; five of those top ten hits sold less than 3 million units.
Where are you statistics about units shipped? I don't see them listed there. Looks like spin to me.
This creative product is lost forever. Many of our greatest performers took years to catch on before their careers took off. In today's world, those performers are being cut before they have a chance to delight fans and realize their own dreams.
*BARF* You don't have creative products for the most part. You have cookie-cutter talent that you create and promote. You cut their chances at survival by overplaying their one-hit-wonders via your controlled outlets.
They are havens for pornographers that project their filth into your homes when your kids innocently seek to find their favorite artists.
Yes, news at 6, your children are affected by porno!
Do these illegitimate services compensate artists? No. Songwriters? No. Pay taxes on the value of product? No. Compensate the record label in any way? No. Invest in the generation of new art? No.
Do you fairly compensate them? Do you pay taxes like you should? Do you care about anything other than your bottom line? Would you have mentioned your own compensation if you did?
My industry can continue to sue users, many of them kids, to establish deterrence and educate the public. But the real villains are not the kids. The real villains are those profiteers who offload liability on these kids and are laughing all the way to the bank as American courts struggle to apply existing law (or misapply it) to this abuse of good technology.
So stop suing the children you claim you want to protect from the supposed evils of P2P. Also, please show me where BitTorrent (again the leading P2P application) is making enough money s
Both are lossy formats, so they are a lesser-quality than the original.
If some American citizen is going to emigrate i can help to start a new life in a free country ;)
SHE does throw dice.
This induces people to commit crimes by copying and sharing these recordings that would never exist if the RIAA didn't sell them in the first place.
ARREST THE RIAA!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
We urge you to support it. It is intended to target bad actors only
Bruce Willis and and Sylvester Stallone were unavailable for comment.
In their upcoming election:
Support those candidates who aren't in bed with the RIAA (are there such people?)
By continuing to vote for the same people who take bribes from the RIAA, you're supporting the DMCA, the INDUCE act, and any/all of the other lamebrain pieces of legislation the RIAA wants to push through.
Anyone who votes for those who support these poor pieces of legislation deserve what they get.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
"This creative product is lost forever. Many of our greatest performers took years to catch on before their careers took off. In today's world, those performers are being cut before they have a chance to delight fans and realize their own dreams"
Err, did I just miss something? This is all their own fault, or concentrating entirely on the teen market and dropping any acts that don't sell at least 1.5 million with their debut. Them not nurturing talent is hardly filesharer's fault.
Their whole bloody argument is that filesharers aren't buying lots of albums (debatable, I know). So what does that have to do with the idea that bands not selling lots of albums aren't around any more?
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
And while we're at it, why dont we ban cd-r and dvd-r drives, since they can be used to copy cds and movies, and audio cassettes, since they can be used to copy music as well. One could even go as far as suggesting that all computers and the internet be banned, since they are obvious outputs for warez and piracy.
It is getting near election time. Time to remind these senators who actually votes them into office and keeps them there.
I already wrote a letter to mine. Do it now.
It's important to point out the absurdity of the wording--the fact that it's too broad and could even be used to target Mead and other paper companies for making tracing paper.
It's heavy handed legislation whose wording leave too much open for interpretation. That alone is enough to have any sane legislator view it as unsound public policy---regardless of the bill's true vs perceived/implied motivations.
Keep it short, but point out how ridiculous it is.
lies, lies, contrived statistics, spin, I'm a tool, lies, emotional evocation, misrepresentation, lies, lies, damn lies
Sincerely,
Mitch Bainwol
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Bureaucrats United with Lazy Lobbyists Stopping Helpful Information Technology act.
According to this proposed law, anything that can be used for or is used in the infringing of copyrighted material can be construed as inducing infringement.
In order to infringe on copyrighted material, you need to have the material itself and a device or method to copy it.
Therefore, copyrighted material is an inducement to infringe.
Copyrighted material can't be copied if it's not created.
Artists create copyrighted material.
They are therefore contributing to the infringement of copyrighted material.
The RIAA can only exist if it supports artists.
The RIAA supports artists who create copyrighted material.
The RIAA are therefore contributing to the infringement of copyrighted material.
Because of this, the RIAA should be ordered to stop supporting artists as a result of this law.
Since the RIAA cannot support artists, it must cease to exist.
Hooray!
That green slime had it coming.
Hot off the heels of iTune's 100 millionth (legit) download and the movie industry's lucrative success, they need to really crack down on piracy!
"Derp de derp."
> I *love* that they use the word "stealing". No matter what spin they try to put on this issue, spreading and copying music is not stealing.
:-)
I have to agree with you. Stealing is when you deprive someone of something they have; copyright infringement is merely making a copy of something and passing it around. It's like cutting the line to pay cover charge at a bar, kinda. But it's not so literal. In Canada, it's legal to do pretty much anything except distribute copies of copyrighted material. But many institutions have a free pass on it, like libraries and museums.
> Oh, I just LOVE this. Yes, BitTorrent (just took over as the leader in P2P traffic) was created for illegal use. I could see Kazaa or Napster, but BitTorrent, no, I just don't believe that.
They are only attacking Bit Torrent because it broke Kazaa's record. Bit Torrent was created as a science project to see if it would work, and when it did, the usefulness of the project became apparent to anyone who wants to pass around large files. Actually the original use was not intended for copyright infringement at all... it was for public projects like games mods and stuff like that. Gamers really pushed its use more than anyone at first.
> *BARF* You don't have creative products for the most part. You have cookie-cutter talent that you create and promote. You cut their chances at survival by overplaying their one-hit-wonders via your controlled outlets.
Funny you should mention that. Last nite I happened to catch part of the Jessica Simpson show and I was thinking how much she is like a replacement for Britney... like a cutout doll, but not quite as stupid as Britney is. Stupid, but not that stupid.
They are in it for money, and music was never about money... it was once about spreading news and stories all over the land, because music was easier to remember than a long dry tale. Bards intended it to be useful as a way of transfering data between cities. The songs made people want to listen, as a side effect.
Nowadays, the music industry is only an industry.
> "They are havens for pornographers that project their filth into your homes when your kids innocently seek to find their favorite artists."
That's just a way of getting sympathy, they're using. It's nothing new. They'll tell you that child porn is available on these systems and that the systems are to blame. Next they'll say terrorists profit from downloading.
> Do you fairly compensate them? Do you pay taxes like you should? Do you care about anything other than your bottom line? Would you have mentioned your own compensation if you did?
Totally accurate. The industry has been robbing artists blind for decades now! It's a crying shame.
Corporations are never going to support interesting new music. They get a new hot ticket and try to get others to be breadwinners for them. It destroys the music and the life of the artists. Touring also hurts the artists, who are no more than slaves to their creativity until they have to become shitty just to have some peace of mind.
It's just the way it is, and it's always been. Greed ruins everything.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Hahahaha!!! :))
For once, being in a third world country feels great. No big brother watching while you pirate to your heart's content!!
Law enforcement in countries like China/India is especially more difficult given the HUGE populations and meagre resources/understanding/moral (read corruption) at the disposal of the law enforcement agencies to go after the culprits.
This will force the music and software companies to sell there wares for cheaper and more reasonable prices. If they don't, then won't sell at all, like now where most of us simply pirate all the stuff!!
Three cheers for poverty and bad law enforcement!!
1: They might once have been necessary, as when the cost of production, distribution, and promotion was a high barrier of entry to independents.
2: That case no longer exists in anything like its original form.
3: They continue to live well off the efforts of others, not due to any contribution of their own that actually adds to the work being done, but rather through their ability to continue to convince the workers that they remain somehow essential to that worker's survivial.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
making it illegal to INDUCE Congress into using IP and "doing it for the children" as reasons to hinder the progress of Science and Useful Arts by restricting what computers can do.
:) You're not helping.
They will cripple computers because computers are machines that can send, receive, copy, modify, and display huge amounts of arbitrary data. That's really all that computers do. Copyright law allows authors the exclusive right to copy, distribute, make derivative works of, and display or publicly perform the work. Funny, since these restrictions are exactly the things that computers do.
So, computers are copyright breakers. Therefore, the way to preserve copyright is to cripple computers or make them illegal. But that would hinder the progress of science, since computers are NEEDED to advance science these days.
So who will win? I dunno. I would like to think the Constitution will win, but I dunno. My request here is that you minimize the amount of money you give to the copyright industry because they realize that they need to make computers illegal to stay in business. They will just do it in 1000 little baby steps like this law where they make more and more computer uses illegal until you can't do much of anything with these machines without the permission of giant corporations. Then they will decide to just make the machines themselves illegal, and we can all sit around the house watching our perfectly legal Content Appliances wondering how the heck the rest of the world has left us behind.
PICK ONLY ONE:
COPYRIGHT
COMPUTERS
Oh, and please don't download illegally using Kazaa or whatever.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
could this bill also apply to libraries, which also are in the business of distributing music for free?
Member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation? That's a great place to go to get form letters to send out to your congressmen, find out about copyright law and digital rights, and, of course, donate or become a member to an organization that has professionals involved, including lawyers.
...out of the way right away. Before anyone starts bitching and complaining about the whole "copying music/software is stealing" and then the enlightened come back with "no it's copyright infringement" and then we get into the whole car analogy.... etc.... I'll start off with the "NEW AND IMPROVED CAR ANALOGY"(TM) ... as far as I can tell it's the closest damned thing to a valid analogy as I can get to (and still maintain the simplistic view that talking about cars empowers one to employ):
... now, and idiot can see that you have NOT stolen a good-god-damned-thing... so besides breaking and entering (maybe... if you needed to do so in order to scan the car) what crime have you committed? Automobile manufacturers are just lucky that no such technology exists, otherwise their business models would be in just as much jeopardy.
Suppose you somehow manage to build a true-blue 3D copying machine. You feed the damned thing with various scrap materials that you own/paid for and take it to your favorite car manufacturer and use it to scan a car.... note that this scan does not in ANY way have any effects (adverse or otherwise) on said car. A short time later, however, you are the proud owner of (insert car name here)
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
You'd $like $the $RIAA $a $lot, $too, $if $you $saw $them $the $same $way $politicians $do.
Do they do it to:
1: To enrich big companies that hold their contracts?
2: To enrich themselves?
3: To enrich their descendents for n generations through perpetual copyrights?
3: Because it's more fun than anything else they can think of to do?
4: Because the music is in them and this is what they do, and they'd perform for free on the street corners if there was no other way to express themselves?
5: Some combination of the above?
Your answer to this will determine if the failure of the big record companies will destroy the creative future of music for us all.
Observation: There are a lot of fiction authors who publish their work for free on the Internet because they can't sell it otherwise. The lack of a big publishing contract has not stopped these people from creating and sharing their works with the rest of us!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Sadly, you make some very good points, but they get lost in the noise. Maintaining a professional demeanor is very important to being heard and understood. I assume since you are posting these thoughts here, you want others to listen to them. I respect the opinions you present, but using foul language and vicious comments only undermine the (otherwise very high) effectiveness of your message.
Because we all know that gansta rapper songs about cop killing and drugs are wholesome familiy entertainment...
"S. 2560, introduced by Senators Hatch, Leahy, Boxer, L. Graham"
Guess who just got a letter telling her that she's lost *my* vote?
Anybody that sides with Hatch on issues like this loses my vote forever.
Just look at the selection of senators and congress crawlers looking seriously at this filth. It's quite bi-partisan.
...
...
... "
The Senator from Disney is a Democrat, Senator Hatch is Republican. There isn't any difference between the two. None. Zip. That's why they can trade members like baseball players and the same policies continue to be enacted.
That's because R's and D's have NO PRINCIPLES, they react to focus groups and think tanks with what they think will get them re-elected this time.
Read the Libertarian platform on this, and ask yourself what you're actually voting for when you cast your ballot.
==
http://www.lp.org/lp-blue-ribbon.html
"We defend the rights of individuals to unrestricted freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the right of individuals to dissent from government itself.
We oppose any abridgment of the freedom of speech through government censorship, regulation or control of communications media, including, but not limited to, laws concerning:
Obscenity, including "pornography", as we hold this to be an abridgment of liberty of expression despite claims that it instigates rape or assault, or demeans and slanders women;
Electronic bulletin boards, communications networks, and other interactive electronic media as we hold them to be the functional equivalent of speaking halls and printing presses in the age of electronic communications, and as such deserving of full freedom;
Electronic newspapers, electronic "Yellow Pages", and other new information media, as these deserve full freedom.
==
http://www.lp.org/issues/internet.html
Politicians are trying to take away your right to read what you want, and to say what you want.
The Internet is making it possible for new voices to be heard -- the voices of people who simply could not afford to publish their ideas or display their artistic talents to a wide audience using older technologies. Established interests of both the left and the right fear new voices, and are trying to control what appears on the Internet through new laws and regulations.
America's Founders couldn't foresee the Internet, but they knew that government control of information was not only a violation of personal liberty -- it was a threat to their hopes for a nation based on the principles of self-government. So they gave us the First Amendment.
==
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
The problem isn't that R's and D's are the same, it's that: mainstream politicians are generally centrists, and the "center" of American politics is skewed to the right such that democrats are no longer very liberal.
You think it's a joke? It's very real for camp groups that have been threatened for not paying royalties for singing around the camp fire.
First of all, has anyone noticed the number of *awful* things sponsored by Sen. Orin Hatch? Why is he the source of so much stupidity? Why doesn't he get, y'know, voted out? It seems like a lot of things he does are awfully unpopular.
It is no secret that the intellectual property assets of our nation are under assault, as never before.
Absurd. We have had stronger intellectual property protection in our nation for the last few decades than we have *ever* had.
The bill is aimed at ensuring the vibrancy of both our creative community and our technology community.
I'm not sure that it helps either artists or technology companies. It is possible, if the RIAA's thesis that they are badly losing money is correct, that it helps music publishing companies.
We urge you to support it. It is intended to target bad actors only - those who have built business models to get away with stealing the creative work of predominantly American artists. The bill finds the right balance to protect both technology AND content innovators.
In subsection (g), "intentionally induces" means intentionally aids, abets, induces, counsels, or procures, and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement based upon all relevant information about such acts then reasonably available to the actor, including whether the activity relies on infringement for its commercial viability.
As other analysis has pointed out, no, the bill decidedly *does* target people who are not "bad actors".
Global sales of recorded music - dominated by our country - quadrupled from 1980 to 1999. Then, almost on a dime, that trend line reversed, with sales figures falling by about a third to the mid point of last year. Before the launch of lawsuits by the industry last fall against those induced to steal music online, we were spiraling down with no sense of a floor.
I do not have the data necessary to judge the accuracy of this claim. However, I have seen many citations of numbers that do not agree with this, and many people have pointed out that there is a strong coincidence with the current economic recession and finally, that it is possible that RIAA-sold music simply does not have the appeal that it once did -- for example, the Internet allows a broader range of new types of music to be discovered, which makes the music that the RIAA markets have less advantage relative to non-RIAA marketed music.
I do not think that this data is convincing enough to broadly extend the reach of IP law, and to make illegal much development in a field that is seeing some of the most interesting research in computer science.
Finally, let us assume that the RIAA really is losing large sums of money and that copyright infringment is the direct cause -- what of the companies that have *benefitted* from the current boom in MP3s? Apple, HP, and many other companies have profited admirably. I know people that spent more money on music-related technology than ever did on music. There are still questions of whether this is a sustainable or long-term beneficial system, but even if the RIAA establishes that it is making less money is not cause for the RIAA claiming that this bill is necessary. Finally, the ultimate goal of IP law is to ensure that production in the arts continues -- I know people that have both pirated music and found new musicians that they were never familiar with before, and purchased albums from those (European musicians, odd techno types, and the like). In addition, electronic music distribution may be a more economically efficient method of music evaluation for such purposes than MTV or the radio. I am very unsure that even if the RIAA is making less money, that there is less money going into the pockets of content creators. The RIAA is primarily a set of companies that do music promotion. If promotion is no longer required for people to find artists that they like (the now-Microsoft-purchased-and-d
May we never see th
"Being a Democrat or Republican is not like being Borg"
This is true! The Borg are neither bribable nor blackmailable!
They have it in red China. Songs that are sung to praise the leaders and songs that sing about how great everything is.
Someone like W gets elected and then we have all of these right-wing authors and talk-show hosts that all of a sudden become relevant - they weren't relevant before, and won't be relevant if/when someone like Kerry gets elected.
The music industry should try to seperate itself from the government; the reason it should try to do this is because the music industry should remain in a place where it can enable artists to be critical of the government; where it can enable artists to be critical of unjust wars and other things.
When the music or entertainment industry goes to the government to seek help, they are hurting their future ability to remain independent of that government, they are hurting the ability of artists that they support in the future to be critical of the government, and to remain independent of the dark, inaccurate corners of that government's policies.
Any government will make mistakes, and constituent "bases" will take delight in things that need to be changed. Here is one area that artists can provide an alternate opinion, a different view - one can only infer from its actions that the music industry has no intention of trying to support and encourage diverse thought and opinion.
So they will keep churning out pickup truck and cowboy gear advertisements and SUV aftermarket parts advertisements and reality videos of karaoke, with perhaps the occasional college band-member's reality heartbreaking girlfriend-boyfriend relationship reality video mixed in here and there.
I think that a more likely scenario is that no one is really going to want to download anything the mainstream music media has to offer if they keep going at it the way they are going at it.
Popular music and conservative government should not mix, it does not lead to good things. If the music industry wants its fans to take care of it, and respect it, if it wants to attract talented artists who think outside the box, and aren't afraid to voice their political opinions, it should not go running to the government like it is doing.
There is the quote from an AC/DC song - "living on the streets, you gotta practice what you preach" - so that is, if the mainstream music industry wants to support and encourage artists that present an unbiased opinion, perhaps artists that present opinions that aren't as favorable to government and the status quo, they can't go running to the goverment for help like that. It won't work. No one is going to take the maistream music industry seriously.
Maybe all those dowloaders are just bored, and/or have nothing better to download. Destroying their ability to download anything other than music industry stuff via criminalizing competing technical gadgets isn't going to make them any less bored, or give them anything more interesting or more download-friendly (in a legal sense) to download.