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.

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! :)