Hatch Pushes INDUCE Act

An anonymous reader writes "According to CNET the Senate is leaning strongly in favor of the INDUCE Act sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch. It looks like the RIAA is making significant progress manipulating the marionette strings in Congress. MP3newswire.net states that if such laws were to pass, the record industry would become the new AMTRAK. 'Bloated and inefficient as always, but now a drain on taxpayers wallets and liberty as well'." Infoworld has a story as well. Reader CryptoEngineer writes: "Marybeth Peters, of the US Copyright Office testified recently before the Senate Judiciary committee in support of the INDUCE Act, which has been discussed here before. In summary, she thinks its not strong enough. Among other things, she proposed scrapping the Betamax decision, which makes it legal to timeshift TV shows with a VCR. Analysis here."

Comments

Powerful incentives (and interests)

[SIGALRM]

Senate is leaning strongly in favor of the INDUCE Act sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch

Senator Hatch has a powerful incentive [opensecrets.org] in attacking P2P networks (see #'s 7, 15, 18).

Oddly enough, by the same logic he's using in this legislation prescription drugs should be illegal because they can be abused as well. But since the rest of his top contributors are pharma co's he isn't likely to raise that as an issue is he?

Re:Powerful incentives (and interests)

[Rick the Red]

Exactly. This will be just like lowering the speed limit to 55mph. Overnight virtually every driver in the country became a criminal. If this act passes, overnight virtually every VCR owner will become a criminal -- exact same situation. And it only took, what, 20+ years to repeal the 55mph national speed limit. In that 20 years cars didn't change much, but 20 years from today most VCRs will be dead (and will long since be obsolete - analog TV is supposed to die shortly after 2006), and all the (legal) digital equipment will be technically incapable of timeshifting if the broadcaster disallows it, so in 20 years repealing the INDUCE act will be moot.

Worst case scenario, in 20 years we won't have any personal computers, because this will outlaw them as well (any general purpose computer is a potential circumvention device and therefore must be prohibited - only DRM-shackled PCs will be legal, and I wouldn't call them "general purpose" if they only do what the RIAA/MPAA want them to do).

Flip, flop

[Ryu2]

Funny, I remember Orrin Hatch was actually a SUPPORTER of the original P2P Napster, to the extent that he actually put some of his own amateur works on there.

See, for instance here

Why the change of heart? I guess sticking to one's original convictions is too much to ask.

This is getting out of control

[minorthreatbmxxx]

As much as I agree with the RIAA that piracy is wrong and should be stopped, things are getting ridiculous. Corporations shouldn't have this much power in government. This is supposed to be a government by the people, for the people, but is now controlled by the corporations...

Question

[strike2867]

Does someone have a list of Senators currenty in favor of the act. They need to be urgently sto^H^H^H replaced.

Amtrak analogy?

[nucal]

Aside from the government connection - I fail to see how the Induce act is anything similar. The US Government actually runs Amtrak as a quasi-independent business (much the way the US Postal Service is run). The Induce act is meant to put a set of regulations in place, not run record companies.

What I find interesting is that the current administration is perfectly happy to regulate the behavior of regular citizens, while allowing unregulated and irresponsible corporate behavior ...

The "reasonable person" standard.

[anonymous cowherd (m]

Quoting the Act itself:

In this subsection, the term `intentionally induces' means intentionally aids, abets, induces, 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.

(Italics mine)

The problem here is that "reasonable people" are rarely reasonable.

Doh, didn't mean to post this as AC.

Re:Proportional Representation

[antarctican]

Try to get proportional representation up so everyone has a voice.

How the hell do you do PR on a presidential election? Each candidate gets a percentage of the Whitehouse?

For the presidential election two changes would improve the system. First, get rid of the electoral college, make it pure nation wide numbers. And second, single transferable vote, instant runoff voting, whichever name you might call it - that would take away the "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" argument. You could vote for Nader, but at the same time vote for Kerry. And maybe once people catch on a bit more, Nader might even win! Yay for America! :)

RTFA yourself, first

[roystgnr]

In the Marybeth Peters statement (an eye-opening read that cuts through the paranoia/lies that Slashdot is spoonfeeding you) she says several interesting things. She is not in favor of scrapping the Betamax decision, and makes no mention of it not be strong enough, despite what our editors want you to believe.

Scrolling down to page 20 of Marybeth's statement:

While you have carefully crafted this bill to preserve the 20-year-old decision in the Sony case, it may become necessary to consider whether that decision is overly protective of manufacturers and marketers of infringement tools, especially in today's digital environment. If the Sony precedent continues to be an impediment to obtaining effective relief against those who profit by providing the means to engage in mass infringement, it should be replaced by a more flexible rule that is more meaningful in the technological age, but that still vindicates the Court's goal to balance effective "and not merely symbolic" protection of copyright with the rights of others to engage in substantially unrelated areas of commerce.

she gives facts making it riduculously clear that Kazaa and others like it are designed to contribute and profit from copyright infringement

Unfortunately, Marybeth's understanding of peer-to-peer networking is just as superficial as your understanding of her statement. Her "ridiculously clear" facts include:

Kazaa gets more advertising revenue from having more users. Duh. Her same argument would make Microsoft liable for people who send copyrighted attachments with Hotmail, except that unlike Kazaa, Microsoft has finally figured out that large companies can buy their way out of federal prosecution with enough political contributions.

Kazaa automatically reshares downloaded files. Again, duh. Bittorrent (which you erroneously think she would support) works the same way. In any case it's irrelevant. If a file could have been legally downloaded once, then it's almost certainly free to upload afterward. In fact, the fact that peers do most of the uploading to relieve central servers of network congestion is practically the definition of how P2P software works!

The X button minimizes instead of closes Kazaa. This doesn't "hide the program from the screen" as she says, it leaves the program in the taskbar, just like countless other programs from Mozilla to Winamp. Again, this is how P2P is supposed to work: because the software is always running, there is always a wide selection of uploaders available, and so uploads can be fast without swamping a central server.

Kazaa lets you download more if you upload more. Again, Bittorrent works this way too. And yes, this is how P2P is supposed to work: fast download speeds for everyone are made possible by ensuring that the first people in line to download a file are the ones most likely to help others download it as well.

Open Letter to Orrin Hatch

[Rimbo]

Mr. Hatch,

You have proven yourself to be a man of noble intent. Your support of the DREAM Act alone shows that you care about individuals, and that you care about the future of America. I am certain that your support of INDUCE is also backed by noble intent; it is wrong for people to steal from the works of others.

On that note, let's examine the business practices of the corporations that have asked you to help them. They frequently state that they are here to protect artists; if that's so, why do artists who work for them revile them? They say that they are here to prevent theft; if so, why do artists accuse them of stealing from artists? They say that P2P applications have no legitimate uses; if that's so, why do struggling independent artists -- those not affiliated with the RIAA's member corporations -- embrace P2P applications as their last, best hope?

I write to you as an artist, and on behalf of artists, whose livelihood is threatened not by P2P apps, but by INDUCE. The RIAA is not speaking for me; it is my competition. Their true purpose is not to protect me, but to lock me out.

Remember how hard you worked to secure digital law for the RIAA, so that they could distribute digital content safely? And how afterwards, they never did it -- except for a few third-rate websites? Instead, they used the law to lock out the means we independent artists use to promote our music -- P2P applications like Napster! These file-sharing applications give me a huge audience and distribution mechanism, so that I can find new fans without the need for the RIAA. That is the REAL reason for laws like INDUCE -- it's not about theft; it is about CONTROL.

What protection is there for legitimate uses of P2P software? What is there in this bill to ensure I can still promote my music without having to sell my soul to the RIAA's member companies using the latest in technology?

If you would like to discuss this issue more, please give me a call on my cell phone any time at (redacted). I believe that you would not promote a bill that would hurt America and its future. I think that if you understood my point of view, you would understand why I feel this bill, in its current form, may be very dangerous to America's future.

Re:You Americans forget something:

[t_allardyce]

Our stores will sell gear without DRM. (It's cheaper to make stuff without it.)

Thats about to change. DRM will be included in most chips (CPUs, MPEG-Decoders & other DSP etc..) and once its in it will pose no extra cost. Finding chips without DRM will be the hard (i.e expensive) thing. Im guessing no American or European companies will risk making them for fear of being fined, some other enterprising foriegn manufactures might make some (or make mod chips) they could potentially make a fortune. Once the big players have got together with the US government and agreed on hardware, life is going to suck and since the US polices the rest of the world (i.e decides what laws we need to have in order to trade with the US) life is going to suck for everyone else too.

Just read about high-flow toilets ROFL "you have the right to own an assult rifle that can cut through trees and brick walls, but not a toilet that can flush more than 1.6Gs!"