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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."
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?
Sigs cause cancer.
VOTE LIBERTARIAN
-- I could tell right away that she was impressed with my HUGE Slashdot Karma.
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.
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I find that I spend far too much time watching television, and listening to music. With the pain in the ass regulations that are going up, I can finally dump my satellite dish, DVD player, television, and TiVo. Without all that crap, I can finally get some programming done.
And just in case they come for my computer, I'm stockpiling schematics, a 68000 microprocessor, 16 megs of memory, and a hard drive. If my PC won't let me run untrusted software, then I'll fucking build my own.
Screw the content Nazis. I don't fucking need them, but they need my money.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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...
Free iPod!eBay o
Does someone have a list of Senators currenty in favor of the act. They need to be urgently sto^H^H^H replaced.
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
This measure is supported by the RIAA but opposed by the tech industry at large. Why does Congress let the tail wag the dog when it comes to copyright legislation? Does Intel just not give enough money to politicians?
Because it will take bills like this to reach rock-bottom before the public wakes up. Only then can we get rid of the bill and the RIAA.
FUCK IT, PASS THE FUCKING BILL. Jesus....*sigh*
Life is not for the lazy.
Hatch introduces these radical bills all the time. This one is Pre-committee [loc.gov]. Nothing to see here folks, move along. Eventually the computer industry will step in and say this is crazy.
Here's the way a bill is normally passed. This one is about at step 2 1/2.
1. A senator and a member of the house get togather and write a bill.
2. They drop it in their respective drop boxes, and GPO prints it up.
3. The rules committee send it to committees for review.
4. Subcommitees tell their committees whether they want a hearing on it.
5. Hearings are held, and each bill is modified.
6. Assuming the bill doesn't die in Committee, and most of them do, it goes to the rules committee for the Senate and the House. A lot of them die this way, too.
7. The rules committee schedules a vote. If they don't, time passes, Congress adjourns, bill dies.
8. Both the House and Senate vote. If one doesn't support the bill, bill dies. These are timed votes, and if you can't get a majority within about 15 minutes (usually) that's it.
9. Assuming all of the above has occured, you get a conference committee of Representitives and Senators who will hammer out a comprimise between the House and Senate versions. If they can't agree, it dies.
10. Then the President can sign or veto. If he vetos, or refuses to act in 10 days (Pocket Veto), the bill dies UNLESS 2/3 of the House and Senate vote to override it. This rarely (in less than 1/10th of vetoes) occurs. If they don't, the bill dies.
All of this has to occur in about 5 1/2 months. I don't think this one will get the fasttrack, and I certainly don't think the House will ever pass it.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
I and 500 of my closest friends have Tivo style television watching entrenched in our way of doing things that if it were taken away, we'd probably just stop watching it altogether.
(here is the letter I sent, misspellings intact)
Dear Senator Leahy:
I would like to express my concerns over the fomerly entitled INDUCE act.
I have read your statement, but cannot reconcile an important point.
If a technology company wishes to make a tool, and induce folk to use it, expressly for sharing copies of works where the copyright has been freely released (my own writings, for example, that I may wish to share with the world for no profit) then that company might not feel it can create such a tool because of the possibility of it being interpreted as an inducement to infringe upon copyright.
I interpret our founding fathers' ideas behind copyright law this way: the more works that are created and shared, the better the world will be. If you create then you alone should be able to profit from your creation, if you so desire, but only for a certain amount of time after which further profit can only be had by creating new works. Copyright serves two purposes: to inspire you to create again and again and, ultimatley, to pass your previous creations into public property where they can be freely copied, thus insuring their preservation for the betterment of all mankind. They carefully crafted those laws with the goals of incenting artists to continue to create works and ultimately preserving those works' societal value forever.
I feel that the internet has provided a distribution vector never conceived before that meets those goals perfectly. Rather than being incented by profit, a corporate goal, many new and important works are being created and freely distributed simply for the betterment of mankind (as well as possible widespread fame or recognition), a societal goal. I submit to you the incredibly valuable Wikipedia.org.
In the past, when copying was limited by technology, an artist had no vector for distributing their works that wasn't corporate -- world-wide distribution simply was not available to the common man due to the tremendous economic hurdles of replication and transportation. Nowadays I, a simple native Vermonter, have an opportunity to share works with my world peers, far-flung and next door, and enjoy their works shared straight to me, without the burden of a cumbersome distribution model. I am hugely incented to create more and share it with humanity. This tremendous incentive never existed before.
Presenting legislation that could be used to stifle technology or activities that induce sharing of freely created works, simply because such could be used to copy works that authors choose to control, would directly contradict the spirit under which copyright law was originally established. Perhaps your response would be that this is not the intent of the law, but I believe that media corporations would try to bend this tool to further their own profits regardless of the impact on freely available works created for society's benefit. There's a reason why libraries are well-represented in the letter you recently received from the EFF!
Thank you for your time and attention, and for your continued work in the Senate.
Sincerely,
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
Or better yet, we'll realize that we watch too much TV anyway and start reading some damn books again.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
> she proposed scrapping the Betamax decision, which makes it legal to timeshift
> TV shows with a VCR. Analysis here."
Perhaps you can write to your politicos, suggesting that a law which would have made every single VCR owner a criminal isn't really a very good idea.
Time to speak up now before it becomes law, don't you wish you could go back in time and speak up before the DMCA was passed?
Also elections are being held soon, vote anyone out who supports this bill.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
After reading a description of the bill, vomitting did not need to be induced, it came naturally to me.
My government officials are hell bent on making me a criminal then so be it.
Every direction I turn I see something that I do in my daily life that uses technology to make things more fun or convienient are put up as "evil" and neede to be made illegal. I give up, I'll be happy to live in the underground as a criminal. These ultra rich senators and represenatives have no clue as to what the real world is and do not give a rat's ass about one single citizen.
unless a mobilization of the american public to scream loud and clear to these out-of-touch fools in the government our desires nothing will change and everyting will get worse.
I strongly suggest that every technically adept person learn how to do things secretly and quietly. Making sure their technology is hidden from the police because what you do today will become illegal and more than likely have a harsher punishment than cold-blooded murder.
I laugh when people sell things like this to conceal what they are carrying. But it looks like it will be required in the future to listen to music or carry anything technological that is not "approved".
certianly makes you disgusted. men like Senator Hatch in congress are like people stopping to piss on the constitution... they are an embarassment and abomination to what america was.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
To your Senators.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
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.
Senators record the number of calls and letters they get on an issue. In most offices, a call carries the same weight as a letter. If enough people call their senator's office, the Senators will shape policy to what their constituents want.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Another law taking away my freedom :(
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 ...
(D) for Disney and (R) for RIAA has gotta be worth at least 2 extras right there :)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
about holding weapons manufacturers liable for deaths using their products. he should have his brain scanned for malware.
I recognize that it might scar the young and faint of heart, but staring into the heart of darkness is necessary sometimes.
Or does that seem a bit over the top? I can never tell.
Recollection becomes an "unauthorized derivative work", talking becomes "piracy." Forget Fahrenheit 9/11, the real danger is Fahrenheit 451.
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.
http://neokosmos.blogsome.com
Yes but it wouldn't be slashdot without a serious overreaction and misreading of a proposed bill now would it
Who says what Apple's intent was in making the iPod? The fact is that it CAN be used as an infringing device and this law would make its non-infringing uses irrelevant, ergo - the iPod is illegal.
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,850 for Orrin Hatch insane. (0.13 seconds)
Most people (correctly) criticized the US Supreme Court's Eldred decision because it essentially held that "limited time" could mean forever.
Beyond that mistake, the Court went further and stated throughout the opinion the fair use rights citizens have are the societal benefits mandated by the Constitution. In other words, the Court strengthened its support for fair use rights.
However, if the public domain is taken away. And if fair use rights are legislated away, then exactly where is the Constitutionally mandate benefits for citizens?! Does anyone even care about the Constitution other than for internet porn and gun rights?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Don't you just feel powerless when lawmakers push shit like this through? You write letters and get some form letter thank-you back from some congressman flunky. Democracy in action.
Hatch has blown way out of proportion the size of the filesharing "problem". I think it is useful to push the analogy that filesharing is like speeding. Just because 60 million americans speed doesn't mean it's a huge problem that needs some heavy-handed legislation to fix. It makes sense to ignore minor speeding and to put the drunk driver who's going 100mph in jail. Similarly, there's no evidence that casual filesharing hurts anyone, so there's no real need to do anything about it. The effort should be put into fighting people who manufacture and sell copyrighted materials for profit. For some reason (*cough* lobbyists, contributors), Hatch sees every filesharer as some maniac drunk driver.
Do we get to ditch VHS and get consumer betamax back?
Blah. You are fucking up our rights because you are cheap idiotic theives.
Hey, I'm not cheap.
Then the President can sign or veto. If he vetos, or refuses to act in 10 days (Pocket Veto)....
Not quite - it a "Pocket Veto" only if, during those 10 days, Congress adjurns. If Congress is still in session after those 10 days, then the law is passed as though he signed it!
if you sell something with the intent
So this is blatant evidence of political graft with wealthy individuals? Apple obviously intends for its media players to only be used for legal purposes. Mike Entrepeneur, who doesn't contribute strongly to political campaigns, obviously intends for his media players to be used to distribute pirated works.
Proprietary software vendors who produce media playback software obviously intend for their software to only be used to play properly licensed material. Open source media players are obviously intended to play primarily pirated material.
A proprietary software vendor who writes a network filesystem obviously intends for only properly licensed material to be exchanged. Open source distributed network filesystems are obviously intended to violate copyright rules.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
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!
I absolutely cannot go back to watching TV on someone else's terms. I've been using a VCR to timeshift for years, and tivo since 2000. If the tivo becomes illegal or has its functionality reduced to a pointless level, I will simply abandon TV. My TV set will become a video-game and DVD display monitor, and I will suddenly have a much higher monthly budget for spending on something besides TV.
Well how about this: I develop a P2P system and advertise it as a general purpose P2P system, and people use it for spreading copyrighted material. Is the fact, that it is a P2P system, enough evidence that I released the software with the intent that it be used for copyright infringement?
If this is the case then the law is a _major_ threat to the OSS community.
I fear the media and public often think "P2P" == "piracy" and this will bias the interpretation of the law.
and with sony claiming that even showing something on the screen is copywrite infringement, we'd better get rid of those pesky computers. also those movable-type printing presses had better go too - after all, their express purpose is to reproduce copywrited material. sticks and mud? gotta solidify the mud & burn down the forests so there aren't any more sticks...
No it wouldn't. Go read the bill.
And a vote for Kerry won't change anything either.
Wrong.
First, Kerry's and Bush's ideals *do* differ. Both Republican and Democrat parties are fairly right-wing when it comes to global comparisons, but claiming that they are identical is ridiculous.
Second, voters are very unlikely to go from Republican to Libertarian. In general, Libertarians compete with votes mostly with Democrats, and will absolutely not beat the Democrats in the immediate future -- there are not enough Libertarians out there. The best way for Libertarians to get a vote is for Democrats to have a large, secure majority over the Republicans -- at that point, Democrat voters that are dissatisfied with Democrat policies will feel safe voting Libertarian, and Libertarians will begin siphoning off votes, and working their way up to becoming a major third party.
Third, there is a particularly disagreeable type of person noisily advocating Libertarian voting at this point -- Republicans who do not believe that they can get any centrist voters, and are trying to convince people sitting on the line between Libertarian and Democrat to vote Libertarian, as Libertarian is not a threat to them. The Republican party is already in hot water in two different states for funding and backing Nader to try to weaken the Democrat vote. I am not saying that you are such a person, but there is no way for us to know that this is the case.
I understand that you want to vote based on pure ideals, however, the voting system is not a mechanism to make philosophical claims. It is a system to place the next set of officials in office. If your vote does nothing, you have simply thrown your vote away. That is not because people are operating badly; it is because the voting system in the United States is not structured in such a way that is conducive to many parties. The real fix would be to move to preferential voting (personally, I'd like to see the electoral college go away at the same point in time) or another voting system that doesn't discriminate as harshly against slightly smaller parties. The problem is that the people in office have little incentive to change the voting system to something that favors the little guy. Again, I think that the best fix for this, if you really believe in Libertarian principles, is to ensure that the Democrat majority is large enough, siphon off enough votes to win smaller elections and begin pressure, using these elected officials, for voting reform. That really needs to be pushed through for a third party to be in place. Once that happens, the Libertarian party has a decent ground to stand on. Yes, that's a lot of work, and it's a way off, but to do otherwise, to imagine that the Libertarian vote is going to beat Bush, is just wishful thinking.
May we never see th
I am a resident of TN and after reading an earlier /. article and following up with a little research on this piece of legislation I took the time to write both of my state Senators. I am putting this post here and hope it gets modded just high enough to see so that I can get out a single message.
If you are in America, write your state Senators and protest this bill with an intellegent argument from the tech community.
We must remember the most important and base principles of a Senator
1. They often vote on bills they have not read or barely understand.
2. They have to listen to people in their state because if they don't they loose the next election.
3. They don't come close to understanding technology like a technician, engineer, programmer, or any of the vast army of geeks out there.
4. Knowledge is power and big words (technical terms) impress the hell out of someone in a political office, because they can take your letter and read it on the Senate floor to sound like they are informed.
If we all write in, we will start a debate. If we start a debate, we will win.
You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test. - George W. Bush
AMTRAK is federally owned and funded, pretty much. How does this law make the recording industry federally funded?
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
for the corporation.
just another example of the egregious effect of the concept of "corporate personhood"
i.e. a corporation has all the same rights to free political speech (read as "give money to politicians") as real people, but with the substantial advantage of not having a dollar limit on their contributions(unlike real people, who are limited to $1000/candidate), and very deep pockets.
the only fix for this particular form of corruption is to eliminate the concept of "corporate personhood"
The difference between Theory and Practice is greater in Practice than in Theory.
Well now only Canadians and Europeans will be able to buy delicious IPods. hum!
Here's a thought: P2P supporters should enlist the support of the NRA, because, at one level, P2P software is just like guns: has a valid purpose, but can be used by criminals. If you can get the NRA behind you, you can rest assured that Hatch and his cronies will be too scared to even think about banning P2P.
Please work on P2P applications. Thank you.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Sometimes, you need to post a dupe of a story.
Not because you are a bad editor, but because the importance of the very real possibility that it will stifle our ability to innovate.
So, enjoy it again for the first time.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I have been doing something interesting for a long time: eliminating "entertainment" from my life. I have eliminated television, most computer games, and other useless timesinks. Instead, I spend my time reading about real topics of interest, working on projects, and socializing with real people.
:)
Guess what folks?
I am still alive. In fact, my quality of life has largely improved since I did this. A little bit (and I do mean a *little bit*) of entertainment is ok. The problem is that our culture is addicted to mass entertainment as an opiate. Put it away. Turn off the TV. Go out with your friends or work on something worthwhile instead. Get yourself off the hollywood crack.
P2P piracy is just a way to get your crack cheap and prolong your addiction. I deleted my P2P crap as well.
The great growth of civilization that we've seen in the last several hundred years is a result of a tremendous pooling of human talent and a tremendous outpouring of productive work. The removal of extreme religiosity as an opiate combined with the emergence of a strong "work ethic" drove the enlightenment. Hollywood is a new opiate for the masses and has largely replaced religion as a useless mental distraction and timesink. As such, hollywood is soaking up time that could be spent socializing, experiencing, and doing. In other words, these opiates soak up productive time.
A myth perpetuated ruthlessly by the entertainment industry is that you need "rest" from your "work." If you feel this way, it probably means that your "work" is something that you do not enjoy doing and herein lies the problem. You should enjoy your work.
I also believe in something that I call "productive recreation." Productive recreation is when you do things like socialize with friends, travel, study, or engage in hobbies. These things give you knowledge and experience. These are the root of creativity and the growth of the mind and soul. Shrink-wrapped entertainment gives you neither knowledge nor experience. It is a time sink that rots the mind.
I think it is time for an anti-entertainment movement and a simultaneous revival of two things: a life revolving around direct personal experience and a work ethic. Work hard, play hard, and experience reality. Turn off your TV and get the f*ck off the couch.
However, I do still have one guilty pleasure. I still read slashdot.
AMTRAK is federally owned and funded, pretty much. How does this law make the recording industry federally funded?
Those individuals who profit most from Amtrak related holdings own and fund politicians and regulators who have any effect on Amtrak.
Those individuals who profit most from media organizations are working on owning and funding politicians and regulators who have any effect on media distribution.
It's not that difficult.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Furthermore, not allowing time shifting is just a crazily stupid idea. Thats tantamount to saying, "look its nice that you like the show but you missed out, you were at work, picking up the kids, doing whatever, and now the penalty for not making time for our show is your not allowed to see it unless you happen to catch a rerun(usually same time but off season, so you are likely to miss that one too) or buy the DVD/VHS several years from now"(if ever, I'm still waiting for the Legend of Brisco County Jr. DVD's - Bruce Campbell rocks). It's odd that they aren't simply happy that they have fans that are loyal enough to make sure they don't miss a single episode.
According to the article, "Nobody wants to undermine the iPod [but] We have to understand that some people use P2P technology in ways that are wrong and illegal." -- Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt)
Some days, don't you just wish that the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution read, "A well regulated public domain being necessary to the happiness and liberty of a free People, the right of the people to keep and hear music shall not be infringed." How is it that guns are an essential liberty, but iPods are so dangerous that they must be outlawed?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
even Microsoft donated to Bush, but not Kerry...
Hmm Mary states that Aimster was created and named after it use of the AOL IM network. I thought this was the common thought but infact not the actual truth.
Because most politicians only "flip flop" after being presented with large amounts of money.
And no prosecutor, corporate attorney, judge, or jury would ever decide that some bloke had really intended to induce piracy when he was just developing a new gadget or program that made it easier to copy stuff. I mean, when VCRs came out was it really obvious that they weren't intended to promote copyright violations? Before the Betamax decision, it wasn't clear that what they were intended to be used for was legal, and if this law had existed then VCRs *would* have been assumed to infringe. Couldn't happen today? not to VCRs, probably, because they're well established. It'd sure as hell kill the next VCR or iPod.
Apple's safe because iPods are already out there, and because they're a big company with a bunch of lawyers on staff, a good relationship with the music industry, and a decent (if not Microsoftian) cash reserve. Not because MP3 players are obviously not infringing.
Section 501 of title 17, United States Code, is amended...
...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.
The above excerpt (my emphasis added) from the INDUCE legislation has two things of note. First, the test of liability is very vague; I'm guessing that a court probably wouldn't find a P2P provider liable solely on the 'all relevant information...' bit unless the P2P featured things like "A Newbie's Guide to Illegal File-Sharing" available with the product.
The second part is likely to prove more troublesome; on whether a P2P provider can profit and prove that they don't have to relay upon illegal file-sharing to do so.
I can think of two work-arounds; free/shareware programs that have no commercial purpose, no advertising, and don't make anybody money, or if a P2P partially sells out - works with The Man to help sell/exchange files - but still allows users to trade files on their own.
Still, I hope that the bill fails.
No, that's internet porn and free software. Internet porn and guns are the two most important things for country music fans.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Congress first of all doesn't particularly care about drafting laws that actually benefit copyright holders in general, rather they care about protecting the interests of the big donors and their pet causes. The DMCA's anti-circumvention statute actually hurts smaller businesses by cutting out "consumer reports" style reviews of DRM systems. Losing 25% of one's potential sales to piracy hurts a small copyright holder significantly more than a large one. In fact, it could make the difference between having a day job and being able to get better at one's creative endeavor.
Hatch has been steadily earning the name "RINO" in conservative circles for his "Republican In Name Only" politics. The RP may not be too conservative, but he's a flaming statist if there ever were one in the Senate. It's also alarming to see many self-proclaimed capitalists support this measure, as IPCentral, a capitalist IP blog and Motley Fool seem to think that INDUCE is common sense. Of course, IPCentral didn't have trackback enabled so I had to email a rebuttal to some of their arugments.
At this point I just don't understand the record labels. Why don't they push hard to get people buying on iTunes so that they can turn digital distribution into an even bigger cashcow? They seem to be convinced of the "justice" of their cause, so much so that they'd rather be dead right than wrong alive.
I don't even need to boycotte them anymore because Century Media and Projekt make most of my favorite music now. Lacuna Coil, a fast rising goth metal band that stole the show at Ozzfest 2004, is signed to CM, which is not affiliated with the RIAA according to the RIAA Radar. This is the future, people. Labels like Century Media know the writing is on the wall, and that being a member of the RIAA is as socially acceptable in the 21st century as declaring you're down with people who gas Jews and lynch black people for fun.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
What I just don't get is, the VCR and similar products, which they want to make illegal, have increased the amount of money and time I spend watching tv, and listening to music. If they go and make these things illegal, and make it a pain in my ass to watch TV or music, or what have you, guess what? All you big-monopolistic, price-raising, customer and artist screwing morons are going to have none of my money. I just won't do it anymore! think about it!
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
>
> See, for instance here
>
> Why the change of heart? I guess sticking to one's original convictions is too much to ask.
And that's the problem with Hatch. He's not an honest politician. And yes, there is such a thing.
An honest politician is one who, once bought, stays bought.
Apple is perfectly safe, as long as they don't try a "Rip. Mix. Burn." advertising campaign again. Apply this to the auto industry, you wouldn't be able to show cars doing over 65 to sell them. Due in part to the brevity of the bill, it seems to be overbroad...
They'll just try again and again and again until they get their way?
How much will satisfy them? How much power? How much money? I'm reminded of Cerebus the Aardvark.
Q: If you could be rich, how much money would you want?
Cerebus: All of it.
Q: No, I mean, if you could have as much money as you wanted, how much would you really want?
Cerebus: All of it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Instant runoff voting would be a huge step forward. I'd love to see that.
The other thing I'd like to see, is the ability to vote for different people to represent me on different subjects since, for example, I tend to side with Republicans on gun control issues but with Democrats on abortion and foreign policy. Imagine being able to vote for person A to represent you on education, person B on the military, person C on foreign affairs, person D on budgets, ...
To be clear, I'm talking about a theoretical goal here, Since I know of no way to make it actually work in the real world. There are obvious problems with this, such as the fact that whoever controls the money controls everything.
Boycotting the RIAA by not buying any CDs might be the "ideal" answer, but its unrealistic for most people.
So as an alternative, consider donating an amount equal the what you spend on CDs to the EFF. And tell your friends to do this too.
Personally, I make sure I donate at least TWICE what I spend on CDs to the EFF.
Proposed Timeline: BetamaX decision is overturned. VCR's, Tivo's, and all manner of electronic gizmo are now rendered illegal. The MPAA, RIAA, and their cohorts will crack down on a select few people to make an example of them. For once, a legal battle fought on the grounds of COMMON SENSE will be won in court, but probaby be overturned by judges and/or congressmen or whoever decide these things (I'm Canadian) who have all recently bought huge new boats and houses with their big anonymous donations. Maybe, just maybe, at this point, Americans will wake up and suddenly realize that their country is being run by a band of brain-dead monkeys who don't give a rip about you, your job, your dreams or your future. Of course, it could also go the other way with the final vestigal organs of independent thought being wiped out forever, or fleeing to neighboring countries. Either way, it'll stop all this arguing.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Why is it that whenever I see a picture of Senator Orin Hatch I think of that scene in The Godfather II where Senator Pat Geary is caught red-handed in a brothel with a hooker who is dead, and only his "friendship with The Family" can save his political career?
Seastead this.
Sorry, but I think that is a horrible idea. The founding fathers did too, and some of them were pretty smart guys. The electorial college isn't great, but there is a reason it was chosen over pure nation wide numbers. In those cases, the politicians would only bother to campaign in (and later cater to) major population centers. The big cities. Farmers and anyone else who lived in rural areas would be pretty much screwed. Policians wouldn't bother to campaign in rural areas, wouldn't bother learning about rural problems, and would pass laws the city folks liked, no matter how bad they screwed things up for rural dwellers.
Dear Sir. I am afraid there has been a mistake. I did not receive any check or money order along with your letter. Please rectify this situation immediately, so I may take your concerns into consideration.
Here is a list of his major contributors in his 2000 campaign.
(here is his original statement http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200406/062304a.html which generated my letter. Below is his response to my letter above.)
Thank you for sharing with me your very thoughtful comments about the "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004." It is good to hear from you.
For many years, I have been a supporter of new technologies and new ways of delivering digital content to consumers. This issue is particularly important to me, and to rural states like Vermont, because the digital age has the potential to bring more content - books, movies, music, and other forms of entertainment - at lower cost and in ways that are easier to use. However, when these technologies are misused, it prevents the deployment of still better ways of delivering content because copyright holders fear, rather than embrace, the new technology.
In order for exciting new technologies to flourish, the United States must protect intellectual property. The creative spirit of America has made our country the unquestioned leader in this part of the world economy, but our innovators will only continue to amaze us with new creations if the rights inherent in their works can be protected. In Vermont, we have seen how more traditional forms of piracy hurt our industries. For example, knock-offs of Burton Snowboards' products have been found around the world, robbing that company of revenues it deserves. I helped pass a law in 1996 to combat this form of piracy, and I am working on more legislation that will help Vermont's companies protect their goods.
The "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004" is aimed at stopping another form of piracy that costs innovators billions of dollars. Digital piracy is on the rise, and in the case of software piracy alone, infringers siphoned away nearly $29 billion from copyright holders in 2003. For this reason, I am proud to cosponsor the "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004," along with Senators Daschle, Boxer, Clinton, Hatch, Graham of South Carolina, and Frist, because I think we need to do more to stem the tide of piracy - but we need to do it in a way that does not target technology. The bill is straightforward, clarifying a longstanding common law principle in the copyright law. It is a provision that has also been found for years in patent law. Specifically, the legislation treats those who induce copyright infringement as infringers themselves. Our experience with patent law shows us that such provisions work: over the years, the number of patents has steadily grown and patent-related industries continue to thrive.
I realize that there has been some confusion about this legislation, and that some have viewed its provisions as anti-technology. Although I disagree with this characterization, I want to assure you that I am working to address these concerns. Please know that I will keep your views in mind as I work to generate consensus on this bill, and to pass laws that are good for copyright holders, good for technology, and - most of all - good for consumers.
Thank you again for contacting me, and please keep in touch.
Patrick Leahy
United States Senator
http://leahy.senate.gov/
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
I read her testimony she never states that we should scrape the betamax case. She does compare current trials to it, and states how p2p networks don't fit within the case. And states that had Sony willingly advertised the VCR as a way to copy copywrited works, it may have come out the other way.
This is supposed to be a government of the people, for the people, but is now controlled by the corporations...
Well, legally a corporation IS a person, so that still holds...
Seriously, the problem isn't so much about corporations as it is about money. Bill Gates has way more influence than the corporation I work for.
Of course, influence runs both ways: IIRC, Gates wasn't giving money to the political parties until the anti-trust suit shook loose that money tree.
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
At what point does this government believe that passing news laws will make America more civil and free?
.... suprise.... Iraq Iraq Copyright
Already the DMCA imposes crazy penalties and fines on violators. For a country as privaledged and wealthy as it is, the US has amongst the highest encarceration rates: namely from those sent to jail for minor drug offences (usually possenssion of small amount of marijuana). So if you or your buddy get caught taping the next Superbowl, the Simpsons or Everybody Loves Raymond and you can't pay the fine..... do you go to jail???
I'm in Canada, so any protests sent to US officials will go ignored. I encourage Americans to tell their officials they protest this. Tell your friends and neighbors. Your copyright laws are being passed on to other countries incl Canada and
So will they then prosecute the induction of the oldest p2p on the Internet, IP? Really this whole thing gets back to that pesky DARPA and those hippie liberals in the UC system with their LSD and BSD.
IP is what allow us to connect to nodes quasi-directly and initiate peered transactions at higher levels. Guess they will just have to sue themselves into oblivion after this is passed. If only there was someone to sue over the electron. Could we finally stop this Digital/Intel/Xerox abuse with that pesky Ethernet allowing people all over to connect machines as peers on a network?
This whole thing stinks; all that is coming is more anti-capitalist market control and corporate welfare. Only supermodel P2P systems will actually feel the cut of this knife in a stupid fracas of greed. Oh well preach -> choir and maybe a little pot - kettle = black too in this post.
Wanna rent some pirate costumes and camp out in front of Hatch's house? Yaahrr...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
True, an intern is probably reading the letters, faxes, etc. that come in (that's part of their job, after all), but some times Senators and Congress members listen. I wrote my local Congress critters about SCO lobbying Congress against Open Source and got a response from one of my Senators that was not (at least from all appearances) a stock reply. Of course, YMMV. Some times if you yell loud enough and long enough, they'll hear you.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
I usually read slashdot for the funny posts. It's remarkable that all the top-rated ones in this thread regarding the INDUCE act are either rated "interesting" or "insightful". I guess this sums up how seriously people feel about this issue.
to the Senate's attention? will they care? remember htey're all basically corporate sponsored these days anyway, hell they might as well have the Pepsi(TM) Congressional Chamber and Disney themed C-Span from the floor with annoying teeny bopper play by play mtv style
One of my dreams being a central library with all content 20 years ago and before on it.
People could pick their favorite movies and books, and another person could use their recommendations to see whats worth viewing.
With a central library, our culture as a whole would be better off. This bill gives more power to the most powerful people.
That is of course in addition to the fact that its so broad that it makes owning a computer illegal because you could copy things with it.
God spoke to me
By the same 'logic', almost everything could be declared illegal due to potential misuse..
Cars, drugs, food, guns, bricks, table spoons...
The possibilities are endless and just as ludicrous..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
When you are talking about congress and laws, "wake up calls" are not too effective.
Its much harder to get an insane law repealed then it ever does to get it passed..
Its rare that laws ( or taxes ) are ever repealed.. common sence does NOT rule in washington.. So no, dont wish for this to be passed..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
His response is posted above.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
Actually, this AC is right.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/faq.html
http://www.sethf.com/essays/major/libstupid.php
Libertarianism is naive and silly. Thankfully, it has no chance of ever going anywhere close to an elected office.
Every time I write my congress critter I get a jury duty notice. I though it was coincidence until the same thing happened to two other people I know. In all cases we never had jury duty before, we write a letter to congress and within a month get servered notice.
Has this happened to anyone else?
Where would we be if Wheel had hid her round rock in a cave instead of showing everyone how it rolls?
follow me here,
:)
many, many intelligent people take issue with the current direction of copyright. Many of those same people actually don't even care for the current notion of copyright in the first place.
These same people (within the US - perhaps elsewhere soon), myself included, will be forced by law to comply if these new laws are passed.
I feel it is every cogent person's responsibility to disuse and disregard any works which ascribe to these new laws, and instead subscribe and add to the notions and creations of open works - made for the benefit of all, not just the benefit of one.
If most (if not all) intelligent people were to do this, then most (if not all) works created under the new laws would be rubbish. These works would be of little or no value since the input of smart, creative folk would be directed and contained within open works - seperate and above these restrictive laws.
In other words, let them keep thier gold - We'll take the silicon.
Now the final piece, all we need are some smart farmers willing to take free, intellectual works to keep us all fed with open food
Tax cuts were given to everyone. In terms of percentage, the poor saw a bigger cut than the rich. A family of four making $50,000 a year had their federal income taxes cut by 50%.
In terms of absolute dollar amounts, the rich certainly saw a bigger cut. That's because they paid more in the first place.
The sad fact of Kerry's plan is that he will raise income taxes on the working upper-middle class (above $200,000), while doing nothing about the tax shelters used by the super-rich (both Kerry and Edwards are in the super-rich category).
Which brings me to your "Republicans versus Democrats" slant. It is unfair, and counter-productive. Is Bush representative of all Republicans? Hardly. There are a lot of conservatives who are quite upset with the administration. Is Kerry representative of all Democrats? Also, not true.
Politicians needs to be evaluated individually, and on the issues. The notion of "anyone but Bush" is stupid and dangerous. It implies support for anyone at all, regardless of how bad they are, as long as it is not the current President. There are a lot of people out there who are worse than Bush. I'm not stating that Kerry is one of them, but pointing out that one needs to vote for someone who they believe will act in their interests. Not simply for anyone who isn't the person they dislike.
The problem is that the masses will never wake up. (1984 book) The only reason they did in the Revolutionary War is because there was wide spread oppression and religous intolerance. Everyone was unhappy and knew why. In this technology/civil rights battle was most of the people affected cannot even program their VCR or list their civil rights.
Is there a way we can get Hatch to be accountable for this? Where is his representation in Utah? Where is the public support abroad? Utah is especially important, because those folks voted him in. How do they feel? My guess is, like most of the population, they are indifferent. While I'm a Republican, and I like reduced government and tax cuts, I'd like to borrow the Democrat characterization "fiscally irresponsible" and make a slight change. Hatch, like many of his fellow congresscritters, is not "irresponsible", he's "fiscally simpleminded." Tax cuts are great, but on the other end we have protectionist legislation being proposed that will not only obstruct the regular, healthy progress of the economy, but also make the government responsible for maintaining the status quo. We've already paid our taxes for decades so the courts could hear the numerous cases surrounding copyright and electronic medium. Now we're going to pay while the government takes over a job from a private industry. Hatch can stuff it.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
That would seem to make sense. However, I can see a (rather nasty) reason why any large telecom company would be in favor of INDUCE. In order to enforce it, either the end user's equipment or the ISP's will need to be "enhanced" with DRM/ filtering technology. This technology would either have to be massively limiting, going so far as to ban encryption all together (or require key escrow), or would have to be updated as fast as the community could work around it. It would be far more difficult to get every desktop/server in the US equipped with such hardware/software than to require ISPs to implement it. Obviously this would cost SBC some money and you'd think I'd proven your point. The key, though, is that this additional overhead required of ISPs would further subvert the smaller ISPs and encourage the consolidation of companies and stagnation of innovation that we can see in the history and present of the telecom industry.
First comment - the people he refers to are already doing something illegal. If you prove it, go ahead and prosecute them. There is no need for any further action.
Next, his dimwitted view of "P2P technology". Its a term he doesn't understand. It has been applied to a particular sub-set of P2P technologies, which have actually been around for many, many years. Ban P2P technology and you ban SMTP - so no more e-mail for a start.
This whole thing is just a indication of an underlying problem - the view of our ruling criminal overlords that its not sufficient to make some act illegal, you also need to make illegal every innocent article that can potentially be used to commit that act.
It's a general principle you'll see all the time: screw the future, but don't make too many people mad right now.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The other thing I'd like to see, is the ability to vote for different people to represent me on different subjects since, for example, I tend to side with Republicans on gun control issues but with Democrats on abortion and foreign policy. Imagine being able to vote for person A to represent you on education, person B on the military, person C on foreign affairs, person D on budgets, ...
That is exactly what my party here in BC is pushing for, not having to take the "package deal" when it comes to policies. In addition to this, stoping the "bait and switch" we see with election platforms so often.
Give the people a direct voice on the issues. Our current system was designed from the days when you didn't know what was happening in the town on the other side of the mountain, let alone the other side of the country. When towns became the size where you couldn't gather everyone in the town square to vote on an issue. So we had to send a representative to a central location to speak for us.
Technology is changing this, we (at least up here) have a highly educated population, computers are cheap, networking is cheap. We can create a system where to get to pick the policies you want, a la carte as we've heard about in the cable debate down south. If I want fiscal conservatism, why should I have to vote for the party that also would create socially conservative laws that limit freedoms?
A better way is possible. Actually, check out Liquid Democracy, it's a system that has really gotten my attention as a possible alternative.
(and I know all the paranoid slashdotters are going to rag on me about how computers can be compromised, electronic voting can't be trusted, yadda yadda.... it can if done correctly, we trust bank machine networks...)
Did you notice this quote from Hatch? "If you help us, we just might get it right," he said. great. That shows a lot of intelligence on his part. He's proposing legislation that he knows is wrong and saying it's other people's responsibility to make suggestions to correct it before it gets passed.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
We have a legal system that has, for over 200 years, been determining just this kind of thing. I see no reason to believe that it will suddenly completely break down if asked to determine intent in this situation.
I couldn't agree with you more.
What's surprising is how many people don't realize that in order for the Senate to "lean" in this direction, it requires DEMOCRATS to be in favor of it too.
We've both faces of the Boot On Your Neck party smiling with this bill of Control Over Information.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
[T]he test of liability is very vague; I'm guessing that a court probably wouldn't find a P2P provider liable solely on the 'all relevant information...' bit
I disagree. I don't think a court would have any trouble applying this standard. The concept of charging a judge or jury to answer a question based on what a "reasonable person" would do or understand is very, very old and very, very common in American (and probably UK) law.
With regards to the "all relevant information" clause, to me that just means that that the judge or jury should attempt to put himself in the shoes of the person or company who is accused. Putting oneself in the shoes of the accused and considering "all relevant information" available to them at the time is another very common legal concept, used, for example, in negligence cases and in self-defense and defense-of-others matters to determine if someone's conduct was reasonable under the circumstances.
The second part is likely to prove more troublesome; on whether a P2P provider can profit and prove that they don't have to relay upon illegal file-sharing to do so.
I don't think this is a hard question, either, at least in the current P2P context where copyrighted material is so common. The profit thing doesn't have to be "proven" by anybody. At least in the civil context, it's a matter of which side made the most convincing argument - the preponderance of the evidence standard. I think somebody could probably make a good case that Kazaa would not be commercially viable without copyrighted material being shared.
I can think of two work-arounds; free/shareware programs that have no commercial purpose, no advertising, and don't make anybody money...
That would not be a work around, it would just make it a little more difficult to prove. The commercial viability thing is not a requirement, it's simply one way that a plaintiff could prove intent to induce infringement."
Would the Man really be willing to work with a P2P service that allowed users to trade files on their own? No.
1) you are probably smarter than a sizable majority of the population
2) the targeted music 'consumer' would still crave brittany and justin even if the only way to get it were to have the broken pieces of the crushed-up CD's packed up their asses with a putty-knife.
3) the average Have (rich, educated, powerful, politically-connected) looks at the average Have-not (half-witted hand-to-mouth douchebag working at a car wash) more as a herd animal than a human being. ie, raw material to be managed for the maximum aggregate labor output with minimum unrest, carroted and sticked into whipping up a frothy lather of frivolous economic activity from which the Haves skim the cream.
4) darwin was right.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I think she should be on the record industry payroll, not ours.
Tech Public Policy stuff
- My vote counts as 8.33..% of the total
- I get a day (or more) off of work
- I get paid for it (since I'm salary, that's extra spending cash)
Can't get the same deal at the general election. Well, I suppose you could, but . . .It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
That's false. Both faces of the Boot On Your Neck party hate the Libertarians, which is why they both cooperate to ensure Libertarians are never included in debates, that the mass media simply ignore the Libs as much as possible, etc.
Have you never read the Libertarian platform? Democrats hate it as much as Republicans to.
Far more often I read people spewing how Libertarians are just Republicans who want to smoke pot, than how Libertarians are Democrats who have been mugged.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Even beyond that, he suggests that they wait for them to decide which ones are illegal. To do what? Pass a law to make them MORE illegal?
Even if they get some networks shut down that "induce infringement", the traffic will just move to other networks. And if they then change their conditions so that they shut down the rest of them, it will just move to some other distribution method--anonymous networks, newsgroups, whatever. This is just the world's biggest game of Whack-a-mole that they have no chance of winning.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
It has to be the ubiquity and fun, because it sure as hell isn't talent.
So once they drop the axe on PVRs, VCRs, MP3 players, any type of recording, sharing or portable media devices that don't require retinal scans and call in activation. Once this new "Digital Lifestyle" becomes an expensive burden, they will start to lose money.
I buy CDs, usually most the songs suck, but theres a few on there. I know I can just rip the CD, toss it in the closet (or garbage), move it around from PC to notebook to MP3 player at will. It probably wasn't worth the $12 for the talent, but oh well its fun and easy. The first CD I physically can't rip/move or that requires me to call some 800 number to activate - seriously - people will start examining the value and quality of the content first and the impulse buys will drop. It becomes a hassle to enjoy the digital lifestyle so people will only put money in the things they're really really serious about, and that will impact sales a lot.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Today, we use our Tivo's (and VCR's) to time shift our programming for viewing.
Cable companies in my area are now offering movies on demand. This is a legal, paid for, and controlled by methods protected by the DMCA service.
You pay extra for this service.
This legislation would effectively eliminate the need for that VCR that SO many American's use for illgal means today.
Cable companies are already timeshifting movies, for your convenience of course, so you don't have to use that pesky VCR that is ever so hard to program.
Will it be that far off for them to charge me to timeshift programs that are now currently free?
This feeds into the dream that Hollywood wants. Anytime you want to access content, you have to pay to use it.
For this reason, I fear that this legislation give the entertainment industry exactly what it wants, and the sheepish population of the US will play right into it.
Anything less is just Socialism, rather than Communism.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Take away the electoral college and you take away the only thing keeping your over-populated metropolises fed.
You should be made aware that the electoral college is already population-based. California, for instance, has many, many more votes than North Dakota does.
The issues that people have with the electoral college focus around the fact that it is only a rough-grained representation of what people want. For example, by Gerrymandering (redrawing voting districs for political advantage), one can isolate all the people that feel strongly about one issue in a single district, and limit their influence to one vote, leaving remaining districts to be narrow victories for the other side.
The main reasons people support the electoral college at all are logisticial issues that I largely now see as solved. It can reduce the cost of recounts by localizing disputes, and speed up the amount of time until the results from voting are in.
Other political effects -- it tends to reduct the impact of physical areas that overwhelmingly feel strongly about something. This tends to blunt the political impact of, say, Mormons in Utah, since Utah has as much clout as a bunch of people in New York, which might somewhat favor abortions but not be screaming and raving about it like the Mormons.
Theoretically, the representative elected in an electoral college does *not* have to follow the vote of the people that he is representing (a rather disturbing thought to many people, including me). It has only happened a handful of times; perhaps ten electors have disregarded the wishes of the people they represented over the history of the United States, but it can happen.
May we never see th
Welcome to the 21st century.
There should be no such thing as campaign contributions of any kind, everyone who runs should get the same things, same tv time, same radio time, same everything. Until we change the way people are elected our goverment will never be for the people, it will always be for the corporations so they can rape the people who pay their salaries.
A few other posters have mentioned that they just don't care and the sooner this passes the sooner the fools who passed it will realize what a huge mistake they have made. Personally, I feel the same way.
One of the main points against this act is how it will stiffle creativity and innovation, especially in the computer industry. If that is the case then perhaps it would be a good idea to move software companies outside of the US so they can work freely. This sort of mass migration might just get Congress' attention and make them rethink their positions. Things probably wont get bad enough to do this, but it would probably speed things up.
Second, voters are very unlikely to go from Republican to Libertarian.
This is, simply, not true! The only libertarian high level officials in the U.S. have all been republicans. Two term New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, a Republican, advocated legalization of all drugs, and promoted the non-agression principle. Congressman Ron Paul, M.D., the 1988 Libertarian party presidential candidate, is a "Republican," although he votes only for legislation if it adheres to his libertarian principles. Additionally, Jeff Flake, a very libertarian congressman from Arizona, is a Republican.
The libertarian party believes that we should eliminate essentially all taxation eliminate all gun laws and eliminate all environmental regulations
If you believe any libertarian would vote for Kerry, you are sorely mistaken! Understand what a libertarian is before you post, and mod this terrible bullshit parent DOWN.
Orrin Hatch is NOT a libertarian, nor is Bush, they are both conservatives, but there is, and always will be, a percentage of the republican party that is libertarian/classically liberal.
Name a SINGLE libertarian democrat in the congress!!!
Both Senator Frist (majority leader) and Senator Daschle (minority leader) are cosponsors.
This one's going to pass...
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
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. She says:
These circumstances also help to show why the concerns about the breadth of the bill are misplaced. As Senator Leahy's floor statement makes clear, those who merely provide copying technology should not be liable under this bill, because they would lack indicators of "intentional inducement" like those found in the peer-to-peer context. For example, the seller of a portable MP3 player does not make it nearly inevitable that the user will commit copyright infringement just by turning the device on. Rather, several additional steps must be taken by the user before any potential infringement takes place. Also, the seller of the portable device is very likely not reliant on building a network like the peer-to-peer service that is trying to sell advertising, and therefore it typically has no need to and does not encourage users to become distributors of copyrighted works.
She also says:
In addition, concerns that this bill would affect liability of Internet Service Providers ("ISPs") are unfounded. Normal activity of an ISP like that defined in the Section 512 safe harbors could not reasonably be considered intentional inducement.
If you know nothing about copyright and want a primer, her statement covers the facts. Obviously, this law still creates a slippery slope, but she gives facts making it riduculously clear that Kazaa and others like it are designed to contribute and profit from copyright infringement. For instance, based on her description of the offending behavior, it's clear that Bittorrent, for instance, would have no problem proving it's legal uses, especially since companies like Mandrake and Linspire are using Bittorrent for distribution now. Frankly, if this does pass (and I wrote my reps via the EFF form to ensure it it doesn't) it might not be as bad as some think.
but I think we're blaming the wrong guy.
Bush is a huge flipper. Sure, he sticks to (bad) decisions like glue, but when there's a vote to pick up by shredding a core Republican principle, he'll do it in a heartbeat.
He opposed the Dept. of Homeland Security. Big government, anti-freedom. Oh, polls were in favor. Cool. He's down with it now. Especially as something to bludgeon Dems with. (Who were for it, almost unanimously, and who were among the folks who originated the idea.)
Agricultural subsidies - statist and terrible economics. What - my base in the Red States is addicted to them? Sure!
Free Trade? Sure, unless tariffs on steel might sway West Virginia.
UN involvement in Iraq - "don't need 'em" until we do. Both dumb and a flip flop.
The stem cell position is as agonizingly nuanced and weaselly as anything a Democrat pres or presidential candidate has articulated in the last 30 years.
Bush has almost no principles. Those he has are wrong.
we all need to move to utah to make sure orrin hatch never again wins a seat in the us senate...
I see a lot of people saying that these laws are bad NOT because they are badly written or inefficient, but because "most" people don't like them. This is supposed to be representative government, right?
But majority opinion only matters up to the boundary where it crosses into the rights of the minority, or even a single person. The minority in this case, of course, is the artist, and the majority is the consumers of the art. The artist has created something that has a high demand and, as a result, an intrinsic value beyond any concept of it being a unique physical object or not. If there was no demand, this problem would not exist. To copy a song isn't theft, but there is a loss of value there. There's a consumer who desired the product. The copy also has value brought into being by the consumer's desire to have a copy.
Maybe the consmuer would not have wanted it if paying for it was the only option, but now were getting into a speculative area that does not make for good legislation. You can't write "follow this rule, unless you really don't want to" in a law book.
I'm not advocating this, just tossing it out to munch on. Maybe we need to once and for all clearly delineate what rights, exactly and precisely, the creators of easily reproduced art have. Right now it seems to be a mishmash. One ruling here about VCRs. Another here on portable players. Instead of another layer of laws, we need to shake it all out and get it straight.
And, no, sorry, but "information wants to be free" is not a rational legal concept. ;-) Too often that means, "I want that information, and I want it for free."
--- Ban humanity.
RIAA doesn't really want to eliminate the iPod, the VCR, etc. What they want is the power to do so, exactly how the Business Software Alliance has special powers granted by congress to examine all your computers, without a warrant, to certify "compliance", and sue you out of existance while forcing you to pay their legal bills. It's not something they do every day because they don't *have* to. The threat is enough.
What the *AA want is a piece of the pie, to mandate DRM *and* get a royalty payment off every device and download. We keep telling them "get a new business model!" Well, this is it.
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
I've contacted the offices of my senators and that of Mr. Hatch. Contact yours now and say you did something! If everyone on Slashdot actually followed through and did this, the opinion of many would be known, and known well.
Yes, you can sit back and convince yourself that your opinion doesn't matter, or you can try to make a difference.
http://www.senate.gov/
Recently many in the technology community have been railing against the Inducing Infringements of Copyrights Act of 2004 , or the INDUCE Act. Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on the bill and after reading the testimony from that hearing I am, as a technologist, not so sure that the bill is a bad idea. The INDUCE Act will amend United States copyright law to treat as an infringer of a copyright any party who 'intentionally induces' the infringement of another party's copyright. The bill seems to have bipartisan support, and is sponsored, amongst others, by Orin Hatch, Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton, Patrick Leahy, and Bill Frist. Senator Hatch and Senator Leahy are the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The INDUCE Act is primarily focused on peer-to-peer networks and especially the use of them to illegally copy movies and especially music. The bill is meant to clarify the meaning of secondary liability in respect to copyright infringement. Secondary liability, in this circumstance, involves assigning liability to an actor who assists or facilitates an act of infringement, and has been recognized by the courts for decades. Previously Napster had been found guilty of secondary liability for allowing illegal downloads of copyrighted music, and was subsequently shut down. However, Grokster, another file sharing utility, was exonerated because, unlike Napster a centralized index of files available for download was not maintained. Still, the court realized that Grokster's revenues were linked to its large user base, which only existed because of the opportunities the network provided for the downloading of pirated music. [1] Certainly Grokster was not running an ethical business as it profitted because of the fact others were willing to break the law.
Although peer-to-peer networks are often used to infringe copyrights, it is not the only legitimate use of them. Still, in her testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Marybeth Peters, the Register of Copyrights and Associate Librarian for Copyright, said that unlike the VCR, there was "no dispute that the use of [peer-to-peer network] services constitutes copyright infringement". Certainly many peer-to-peer networks are used primarily for copyright infringement. However, there is one peer-to-peer network The Free Network Project that is, in fact, being used in countries such as China to facilitate the free interchange of political ideas. Users contribute to the network by giving bandwidth and a portion of their hard drive (called the "data store") for storing files. Unlike other peer-to-peer file sharing networks, Freenet does not let the user control what is stored in the data store. Instead, files are kept or deleted depending on how popular they are, with the least popular being discarded to make way for newer or more popular content. Files in the data store are encrypted to reduce the likelihood of prosecution by persons wishing to censor Freenet content. [2]
Any legislation, that prohibited such technology outright would irreparably damage the First Amendment in the digital age. The right to assemble virtually over the Internet, via a peer-to-peer network, or any other mechanism, is a trivial extension of the freedom to assemble in a public place. Any person should have the right to speak and to exchange ideas with any other person over the Internet, just as he does with a person in the physical realm. This "digital right to assemble" should neither be eroded by allowing the government to eavesdrop on conversations unless a proper warrant has been issued.
The INDUCE Act, however, seems aimed primarily at companies that profit from providing technologies that are used to engage in copyright infringement. Now, this is tolerable to an extent, but it seems hard to differentiate the provider of peer-to-peer networking software like Kazaa, from manufacturers of CD burners and other mass storage devices, or a peer-to-peer network like Freenet for that matter. The vagueness of the law seems problemati
Let me be clear, however, that our concern about its future application should not hold up this bill.
This is the point where all of us have to contact our senators because they are listening to the dullwit expertise of a woman who, frankly, would obviosuly not know what the proer use of a copyright was if it bit her in the face!
The louder you are, and the more obvious you are about the fact that you are watching them, the more likely you are to be heard.
Especially if you have a senator who is up for re-election.
Contact your senator. Phone, e-mail, etc. Scream as load as you can. Tell your family and friends - scare them about the idea that their VCRs and TiVos could be considered illegal - and get them to contact their senators, too. This thing has to die in the Senate - fast.
One of the nice things about the Electoral College is that it reduces the impact of ballot box stuffing in urban areas. At worst, NYC can only screw up the New York vote. This is what it was intended for - to provide some additional power to the smaller states and prevent the larger ones from controlling everything.
The system isn't broken - besides it would require a constitutional amendment to change it, and it wouldn't pass because of the reason cited.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Scrolling down to page 20 of Marybeth's statement:
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.
...remember when someone found out his website was using a pirated menu script that hadn't been paid for? Well, apparently it was the web-designer who used it and thus commited copyright infringement, however, Sen Orin Hatch asked (induced) him to make the site, ergo, he could be implicated, now we just have to get him to make the bill retroactive and we could put pay to him once and for all. Or someone could end his suffering and put the fuckhead to sleep like they do to lame animals, either way, I'd chuckle.
I am NaN
Um, Amtrak is actually *useful* - the recording industry is *not* useful anymore.
How the heck has *Amtrak* drained liberty from anybody? That's the dumbest analogy I've heard in weeks.
Let's see here..
Get on train. Pay $8. Get from my place to Sacramento in about an hour. Enjoy the scenery along the trip.
Go to record store. Spend $16 on CD. Hate all but 2 songs. Can't return it because the store has a "no return policy." Can't rip it because of crazy DRM.
Yeah, I think I'd take Amtrak any day.
You've got it all wrong....
The record labels are in the position of whale-oil salesmen at the dawn of the age of electricity.
The whale-oil industry undertook huge PR campaigns to talk about the evils of electricity... got laws passed to help them. In the end, they died like dinosaurs. The smart ones however, adapted.
Here's the REAL problem: Adapting to embrace the new technology will in this instance, as the labels know, make the labels obsolete in the long run and they will perish.
As many have noted, the labels simply have a dying business model, and suggest labels need to embrace on-line music sales and sharing. Some have done so. But what few people have realized is that by adapting to the new technology like the smart whale-oil salesmen, they are signing their own death warrant because the widespread adoption of legitimate, on-line music sales will have artists asking: "Why do I need a label?" And they will be right to answer that question "I don't" because the services (spit) labels give to artists (distribution, pressing, promotion, etc.) will be either 1) unnecessary or 2) practically no cost with on-line sales.
You don't need a label to get your CD into the store with limited shelf-space.
You don't need a label to front the budget for pressing.
And consumers don't need a label to find and develop bands.
Everyone else still has a job... producers, musicians, recording studios, roadies, groupies, etc.
It is just the labels that die.
They are desperate for a plan B that will save them... even if that means raping women and children and cutting heads of innocent old ladies. ANYTHING rather than die.
This might be an excuse to start getting out the youth vote. I suggest the following add be placed by 'interested citizens' in his riding:
These ads should start going out as soon as possible.. Similar adds in the constituencies of other senators who are supporting this bill.People should start putting notices on their websites about senators and congresscrittors trying to outlaw these things.
If anything will get out the youth vote, I think that this will.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
$665M (Congress + the Senate) for the top 40 high-tech companies combined is petty cash... but it is far more than the Hollywood content cartel can possibly scrape together out of profits.
High-tech industry has allowed itself to be pushed around by Hollywood for far too long.
Isn't there anybody with balls at MS, IBM, Google, et. al. willing to stand up to Hollywood?
This is like asking "does this herd of elephants have the courage required to stand up to a pair of fucking yap dogs?"
Given the answer to that, if you want to do innovative technology, better start shopping for a country that has not allowed its political leadership to have been cheaply bought off by the *AA companies.
Tech Public Policy stuff
The fact that it means someone living in Wyoming has a vote that means more than me means it is broken. You're right that fixing it would be next to impossible though.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Very misleading. The rich are a tiny minority of those who received tax cuts under the Bush plan.
The rich are a tiny minority to begin with. By giving a $1 tax credit to every person with less than $1M/year income, and a $100,000 tax credit to every person with more than $1M/year income, you do exactly what you just described.
I'd say that your statement is more misleading than that in the parent of your post.
May we never see th
Somewhere above you'll find someone who posted the letter they sent their congressmen and the cookie cutter response they got back.
I've sent numerous letters to congressmen and gotten the same responses back. THEY DON"T READ THEM. Some aid reads them. There could be millions flooding in and the congressman won't even know it happened.
"So what, we should do nothing then? Just sit back and take it?"
NO. But the easy way out, emailing or mailing a letter to your congressman isn't the answer either. You have to make your voice heard publically. We have to create such a load roar AMONG THE PUBLIC, that it is heard by the ears of our congressman.
This bribe from the RIAA doesn't mean much if he knows he won't be reelected and therefore won't have the opportunity for bribes in the future.
Write editorials to the paper, stand in town square with a megaphone for gods sake. Put out flyers at libraries, grocery stores, local businesses, donate to the EFF, band together and raise funds for a cheap tv spot in place of an infomercial tonight.
Talk to your families and tell them to do the same, And yes, the sad truth is that you have to make the bold far flung attention getter statements out first, and debate details AFTER.
Start out with statements like they want to outlaw VCRs! And it's always been illegal to copy tapes, now they want to enforce it. They want to outlaw your computer and xerox machines and anything else that could be used to copy information, EVEN INFORMATION YOU OWN!
Start doing this now, not later. Do it now and this bill will die in commitee, do it later and they'll exempt devices that will piss the public off now and this will affect all innovations in the future.
Be loud slashdot, we DO have numbers here, we have enough numbers to take down most servers instantly at any time time of day simply by linking in a high modded comment for godsake.
If we all get the message to even 3 people that is a rumble, if they each get the message to even 2 people it's the start of a wildfire.
If america doesn't start getting loud about these issues, if we don't stand up and say that "we won't take this anymore". Then all we have to look forward to is being beaten down, slowly but surely, in small incremental steps until one day we wake up in a cott in our tiny 1 room apartment, with bars on the windows.
We look around prisoners in our homes, and we think about those barbaric uncivilized 3rd world nations where nobody needs a license to leave their homes during curfew hours, and they don't even doorlocks to ensure this and keep everyone safe.
Much like today when we think about those barbaric 3rd world countries where you don't need a license to drive a car, or to go fishing. Where you need no license to have a gun and anybody can plop down on public property, lay out a blanket and sell goods.
If you don't start making your voice heard on this issue, today, your that much less likely to do so tomorrow on the next issue, and the next, and the next. That is how we've gotten to the spot we are in today. It's not too late to stop it from getting worse tomorrow!
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.
The US legal system has repeatedly and routinely been abused in exactly the way I'm suggesting, not only producing deep personal tragedies for people caught in the wheels, but derailing or delaying the introduction of new technologies and new features of existing technology. I don't see how anyone could look at how things like the DMCA and RICO have been abused and conclude that INDUCE would be anything less than a blank check for barratrous attorneys to go out on fishing expeditions.
Please, don't just talk about this. Please get out and vote in November. Please change this government. The Induce Act is bad. The Patriot Act is bad. Please stop what this government is doing. Get out and vote and teach everyone you know the truth.
TW
Television is dead. Long live That Weasel Television
I like a fairly diverse set of music (Gillian Welch to Rammstein), but a quick check at RIAARadar.com shows a good chunk of it is RIAA produced.
Now, I hate the RIAA as much as the rest of you. I like my rights, and it sucks that they're being trampled. The RIAA blows.
But I also really like music. And I don't buy the argument that all RIAA music is crap. It isn't. The stuff that gets a lot of commercial airplay may very well be, but it's simply not true to say that the RIAA doesn't have good artists.
And there's my problem. I hate the RIAA, and I like the artists. I'd cheerfully screw the RIAA by burning CDs from friends or finding what I like on the p2p networks, but I feel wrong not paying the artists for music that I spend a lot of time enjoying. Their hard work makes me happy, and they deserve compensation for that.
I wish there were a way I could mail the artist a check directly, for some fair price. If I could, I'd send a letter saying, "Hey, Gillian. I downloaded your music from Kazaa. It's great. Here's eight bucks. I trust that's more than you'd get from the RIAA, if I bought their packaged version."
Does any mechanism like this exist?
You're not the only country in the world. You're not even the only country on your land mass.
Your friendly neighbour to the north (Canada) allows filesharing technology. The Internet cares not for borders.
Our stores will sell gear without DRM. (It's cheaper to make stuff without it.)
You can walk or drive to Canada. If not, our stores will ship gear to you. Pick up a high-flow toilet while you're here - they're great!
Also, our legal system is loser-pay. That means that if someone sues me in a Canadian court and I win, they pay my legal bills. The RIAA's tactics can't work in Canada.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
How the hell is Amtrak a drain on taxpayers's liberty?
I would also be dubious of the claim that it's bloated and inefficient, but on those counts I must admit I don't really know the basic facts. Still, some serious evidence would be needed to justify such an assertion.
The bit about drain on wallets.... eh, well....
zach
Q: How do you know when a politician is lying?
A: When you see his lips moving.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
Russian components... American components... They're all made in Taiwan! I guess that's one benefit to outsourcing to India and China.
Remember how the P3s had the unique ID, and it went over really well, and now the P4s all have unique IDs? The market, not the government, will decide what goes into the chips.
This would be a better post if it's wasn't 5. Bye.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
This measure is supported by the RIAA but opposed by the tech industry at large. Why does Congress let the tail wag the dog when it comes to copyright legislation? Does Intel just not give enough money to politicians?
This especially considering Utah has a thriving hi-tech industry, but is in no way a media powerhouse.
However, it would take a serious miracle to get Hatch out of his Senate seat in Utah. Not only does the majority of the population votes Republican automatically, but Hatch's campaign is usually run on the idea of how helpful it is to Utah to have a senior, well-connected Senator fighting for our interests in Congress. This is particularly ironic considering Hatch ran 30 years ago on the concept that the incumbent had become a Washington insider.
Tweet, tweet.
To paraphrase the CEO of Sun:
Freedom of spech is dead, get over it.
AUPs are agreements between you and a service provider. They agree to provide you a service, in exchange for cash, but as it is their service, they are allowed to set limits on it. Just because I give you space on my webserver does not mean you can do as you please with it, I can restrict your usage.
However this is all fine because it's all free market. I know that there are telecommunications monopolies in some places, the monopoly is the problem, not the underlying theory. As I was saying, it's a free market so if a company is unacceptable, you go to a different one. Enough leave, they'll learn. This is happening to Qwest in my area. I had DSL with them, and it blew. I now have DSL with Speakeasy and am pretty happy. I'm not the only one, as Qwest is revamping their service and pricing.
However, violating an AUP is grounds for loosing your service form a given provider, not for going to jail. That's what makes laws different. You go to KAIL for breaking the law, and you have no alternative provider (moving to a foriegn country is inapplicable and usually impossible). I don't much care if Speakeasy outlaws FTP on their network, I'll simply get a different provider. I would very much care if the government outlawed FTP, since getting a different governmnet isn't really something you can easily do.
Also, ISPs will listen to their users. They won't listen to a user, but they'll listen to them in general. Cox has a clause saying no VPNs which was so broadly written even SSH could count. BAsically, they wanted you to get bussiness class to use that. Well our university extensively uses SSH and Cisco VPNs. So a rep from the university had a chat with them and explained we'd recommend against using Cox, unless they changed the clause. The clause was then changed.
Same thing can work if the users get together. Get 10,000 people that are pissed and get a list of things that need fixing. They fail to respond, you all terminate your service. They WILL respond (or the shareholders will replace thwm with people who will).
Same basic theory as a representitive government, except you can hop to an alternate provider while the other ones shapes up. Not so with governments.
Government has tanks, Nuclear warheads, and thousands of times the people I could summon up.
If I did rise up and shoot at the government they would simply shoot back with more firepower than I'm legally allowed to own. And then I'd be dead and they'd go right back to business as usual.
Those of us reading Slashdot are not making the laws. I would venture to say not a single member of either house of congress, or any of the state legslatures reads Slashdot with any regularity, if at all. I also can tell from this and other like posts, that nearly all of Slashdot opposes such a law.
So get off your high horse, we aren't thinking we are the only nation in the world. We ahve some stupid lawmakers (and don't pretned like Canada doesn't have some too) that are trying to pass a stupid law that we disagree with.
P.S. I'm a Canadian citizen too.
This is really easy to stop. For all we talk about campaign contribution and corporate influence, Hatch is still accountable to the people. If you want to kick him out of office, just get the voters mad at him. All the campaign contributions in the world won't get him re-elected if the voters hate him.
And none of the voters like this bill. The only reason he's getting away with it is that most people don't know about it at all. (What? The mainstream media isn't reporting on it? Shocking!)
So get the word out. Write a pamphlet that describes this in a way ordinary (non-geek) folk will find informative (think "VCRs made illegal", not "stifling innovation"), put it online and get people in those areas to print up copies and hand them out door to door.
Be sure to ask the recipients to write to Hatch et., al about this as well. There's nothing like a flood of angry letters to get a politician to back off.
The more draconian the laws get in regards to the content industry the more its going to hurt them. How do new TV shows hit critical mass? Usually tape trading and word of mouth. Remember Seinfeld's first couple of seasons? No you don't. No one does because no one watched. The show achieved critical mass later on. This tends to be true of a lot of television and media. You get some kind of loud cult following and if enough people jump aboard the bandwagon suddenly Joe Sixpack is singing its praises too.
How will they promote their new shows? Who will be sharing tapes with friends? Pushing play on the VCR and saying "Check this shit out?" No one. That means it will be harder to market new television, lots more canceled shows, lots more midseason replacemnts, and lots more reruns. The Simpsons is already on three times a day. Heck, Cheers is still on.
At this point I do hope they shoot themselves in the foot. Put up all the damn digital protection you want and my incentive to watch will go down. Not because I'm going to knee-jerk about digital rights, but because if my Tivo can't hold it for me, chances are I'm not rushing home at 7CST to watch your show on YOUR schedule.
Toss in I can't share this show with anyone and you've lost more customers.
People will just shift to the DVD rental market and movie theaters. The TV will collect dust while people discover better things to do with their time.
Could happen or the very least these policies could hurt the industry in ways it is not taking seriously.
The main problem with the INDUCE act is that it's too vague--it doesn't specify exactly what I'm allowed to do and not allowed to do. What exactly is going to be criminalized by this? We know they want to get rid of Kazaa. Is Bittorrent also suspect, even though linux distributions and the mozilla project among many others have used it as a legitimate means of relieving bandwidth? Is the freenet projectfreenet now going to have to move underground? Are programs released for free with no profit incentive equally doomed? Are CD burners, MP3 players, and VCRs also doomed? No one is offering evidence of what would and would not be prohibited by this.
So, if your job was to specify a reasonable version of this law, how would you write it? Let me suggest some of the following:
Require programs likely able to be used for copying purposes to warn the user when files will be shared and which files will be shared. Advise the user to make sure they are only downloading and sharing legitimate files. A big part of Hatch's complaint is that users are tricked into sharing illegal files then sued for it--if he is being sincere, then the law needs to be targetted to prevent deception and misunderstanding, rather than just a vague notion of "inducing".
Require that all programs are actually used substantially for non-infringing purposes. Not just theoretically useable for non-infringing purposes--actually used. Bittorrent would be good, since a big chunk of bittorrent bandwidth is actually legitimate distribution. Kazaa probably wouldn't be quite so fortunate.
Exempt programs that are released with no profit incentive and no centralized control system (even auto-update can be suspect)--the contention is that programs are released in order to make money from stolen content. If that is the problem, then simply forbid questionable software from making any revenue (adware, spyware, shareware, or simple commercial software).
Some combination of these ideas would make a much more palatable INDUCE act. Software would have to be modified to fully inform the user, some business models profiting from illegal file transfer might be banned, but overall computer would still be able to do everything they can do now. Computers are universal turing machines--you can only forbid them from doing so many things before you've outlawed all computers.
If they still wouldn't be satified with this bill, might I suggest that they write a somewhat less ambitious law? Since P2P technology seems to be the inspiration for this law, then they should write a law focusing exactly on that--what sorts of P2P networks are acceptable, what sorts are forbidden. If future technologies arise, then write more laws to govern those. Trying to write a bill that governs all technologies will never work--the resulting bill is so vague that everyone on the Internet is going to end up getting sued. Heck, the record companies will probably start suing themselves by accident. Maybe Senator Hatch should be a bit more conservative in his law proposals--this one is far too ambitious.
This is a type of law that focuses on people who don't vote, young people. Young people are really the only people who are downloading MP3 and DivX stuff. 55 year olds aren't going to risk jail and bank account confication in order to hear "I can't get no satisfaction" one more time.
Basically when laws like this are passed, they are written very broad so that anything involving music recordings in digital form can be interpreted by some mean old judge somewhere as illegal. But they are always enforced very politically. Rich white kids will get away with claiming that their brother's girlfriend's old college Napster account makes it OK for them to download anything and everything, while black college students will be thrown in prison for downloading 80 year-old African-American history items from the Library of Congress without written permission from the CEOs of the global media corporations.
These kind of laws just perpetuate and intensify the level of institutional corruption already present in a country. They seem new and extreme for America, but it's just standard operating procedure in the third world. What's disheartening is the extent that the US Congress is adopting third world legal standards. Before the Reagon era there was always someone in the back rooms of the Capitol who would just say that these bills were Bongo Congo laws and not the way that we do things here. Now the corporations are in a positive feedback corruption loop passing dumb laws right and left.
In the long run, the effect of really dumb corrupt laws is to transfer innovation both in culture and technology to another part of the world where there isn't so much pressure from the government. The reason Hollywood became the world's film capital is because all the bright people moved there from the NorthEast in order to get away from Edison's crushing patents, back when he claimed to have invented everything and had enough money to hire private goon squads to bust up any movie or sound recording activity that didn't pay him off.
Sometimes you just gotta lighten up and let people create and copy, regardless of how many patents or copyrights your lawyers say you own. In the end, it's good for business.
You know, I think this will be the only time I post this, but when we have articles like this, the community really gets fired but. But honestly, do any of you do anything. Of every slashdot member that doens't like this spreads the word to other forums and sends messages to their senators, you can get something done. Showing a willingness to do something in force can scare any senator. They get lots of money beyond their pay check from congress as long as they are in office, hit them hard. Do not vote for people that support things that you are vehemently against. When you see them tresspass where they shouldn't, fight back. Yes its hard, and you will probably be shot down, but just keep doing it, over and over. I personally have written 3 responses to my senator about this(yes, I neglected to right to the other one, that will be tonight). If you don't care enough to do something, then quit complaining. Democracy is supposed to be about getting your voice heard and corporations are doing their best to drown you out, I love how so many people just let them do it. Laziness never helped a democracy get anything worthwhile done.
First the Republicans (say) run the show for a while, and they decide to make it illegal to use recreational drugs. Then, after a few years, we get sick of the Republicans, and we vote the Democrats into office. And do they make it legal to smoke pot again? NO! They take our guns away. So out with the Democrats, and in with the Elephants again, and do they give me back my guns? Of course not--they're too busy taking away women's right to an abortion.
I'm sure you see where I'm going with this. The absolute worst time, of course, will be when we all feel like we're living in a very small box, but we hate each other's politics so much that we can't get together to get rid of the politicians that implemented it (that day's not so far off, if you ask me). Finally, we end up with a revolution, and we shoot the politicians, then we shoot each other over whose gonna be the new boss.
We do this to each other. I take your freedom, and you take mine.
I need another glass of wine.
the record industry would become the new AMTRAK. 'Bloated and inefficient as always, but now a drain on taxpayers wallets and liberty as well'.
AMTRAK isn't at fault for their problems: AMTRAK is a moderately subsidized business trying to compete with a heavily subsidized business: the auto industry.
The amount of money the US government is draining from our wallets and funneling to the auto industry and the amount of pressure the government creates for us to use cars are staggering.
And if you think the AMTRAK bureaucracy is big, have you ever even thought about the size and complexity of the bureaucracy needed to build and maintain public roads, from the local level to the federal level? And have you looked at the level of service you actually get from them? Or how they make decisions (like building perfect roads for the main roads politicians travel on in DC and creating special parking spots for politicians, while letting other parts of the city fall apart)?
If using the car were a truly pay-as-you-go proposition, you'd hardly ever use it. And if AMTRAK had the same level of political support as the auto industry, you'd have service to your doorstep.
Can't we recall him or something? Orrin Hatch is extremely annoying. Corporate America has totally made him their bitch. He has been responsible for a ton of the legislation geared at taking away our rights little by little so that huge corporations can make more and more off of us. Somebody's got to pry this guy of the RIAA/MPAA teat!
I think I'm going to sue God or Nature (which ever one is in control, I'll cover the bases) for inventing the brain. Right now you are reading this message, the message is being copied onto your eyes through lens, being processed (copied again), and then being stored in your brain. If I were to copyright this message then everyone reading this would be in violation of the Induce Act. Then if you went and told someone else about this message you'd be infringing on my copyright, by copying it and then editing it, because I doubt you're going to recite this message verbatim. Your brain makes it possible to steal.
Once again stupidity taken to the extreme is dangerous, and we are all aware of how stupid the RIAA is.
I know about the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case, but couled this law be declared unconstitutional due to the statement that Congress should have the right "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries".
This seems to fly flat in the face of that because (A) it restricts the manufacture/trade etc. of items that could be used after the "limited times" expire (technically, such a time does exist, despite Congress' stupidity as of late) and (B) it seems to fly counter to the promotion of the progress of science and the arts
RTFA (I know you won't, but maybe some people will)
/. crowd chose the "burn the witch !" option.
/., you need to pull your head out of the lower end of your digestive system and at least make an attempt at listening to what people say.
She doesn't want VCRs to be illegal. She even provides several criteria that allow to distinguish between products that should and should not be allowed (she didn't invent them, they're based on legal decisions):
1) The product has or doesn't have substantial non-infringing use. VCR: check. Napster, Kazaa et al: Look at the traffic, how much is non-infringing ?
2) The product does not depend on infringement to be commercially viable. As she says, in the case of a VCR or of a portable MP3 player, clearly the product would still be commercially viable even if only legit use was possible. If you really believe that Kazaa would survive as a commercial entity if infringing material was removed from it, I give up.
But you don't even need to trust me, because she provides one shrewd example: The "old" Napster. Remember them ? As soon as they filtered out copyrighted material, they went under !
Kazaa and similar services thrive on massive copyright infringement (BitTorrent doesn't, as it is used by several companies to distribute products legally in a practical way). This is fact for anyone with at least vague remnants of sincerity. There may be several answers to this. Legal licensing ? Throwing copyrights away altogether and deciding that "information wants to be free" and that intellectual work should only be financed on a "for hire" basis (after all, if you want to go back to the dark ages, that's your problem) ? This is an interesting debate - too bad the
Instead of us whining on slashdot, we need to inform and mobilize the masses.
Instead of you whining on
Thomas Miconi
So much for open systems!
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
So don't tell me that the Germans never attacked us.
- Grandpa Simpson
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Note: The "USAPATRIOT" Act has nothing to do with patriotism, so I pronounce it "the you sap at riot act" to avoid confusion.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Abolish one single presidency and instate a council of several leaders. We could call it a 'cabinet'. Give each of the cabinet members a say over one particular part of policy, say one for the economy, one for foreign relations, one for internal politics, one for offense and one for defense, just as some examples. End the use of political parties by moving from a running for election which is very costly ($186 million so far and counting) compared to standing for election, the system I believe is used is a lot of parlimenatry governments.
In standing for election, the campaigning time is reduced from the US time of four years for the president, six for a senator, and two for a representative (for those outside the US, that's their entire term) to only one or two months before the election. Instead of 'running' for election, going from place to place, the candiates 'stand' by publishing their position papers in newspapers. There is a rebuttal published from other parties. The candidate then responds to the rebuttals. No more fearmongering, years of campaigning, and vauge promises. Everything that the candidate stands for is in black and white. Everything that all candidates say is picked apart by the others. Those who don't care to read about what's going on in their government or the positions of various candidates don't have the chance to be persuaded by flashy PR campaigns and probably just don't vote. Overnight, you eliminate the uninformed voter. Suddenly small candidates can run without hundreds of millions of dollars in donations. Ultimately, although not immediately, parties can become unnecessary. Money looses it's importance in politics. The system works because it utilizes, instead of ignores, people's appetite for power. If they want to remain in power, they have only one duty to do faithfully (serve only the people for only the one task that they have been elected to do), instead of many different roles, as the presiednt does now, compounded by many different influences.
It has some obvious gaps, such as figuring out how to narrow down the number of candidates for each particular cabinet post without relying on parties, although a gradual phase out over time might be able to accomplish that, if there was a strict, unalterable timeline.
Maybe I should write a pamphlet or something?
The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life- the terror of art. -Franz Kafka
I encourage anyone else to do likewise. RSS has no value if it's stagnate and the EFF feed has the potential for generating a lot of faxes/emails on important on-line issues.
Sorry, but in a few ways I agree with the electoral college, the fact is, this is a leveler for the interests of smaller states, since most of the country's population is in 5 states... If it were strictly population based, it would limit the interests of states like Wyoming, or Ohio.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
If these evil things come to pass, I'm gonna build a shack in Western Canada, with a hi-speed (satilite?) internet connection, and buy myself a nice collection of guns. Anyone who tells me I shouldn't do whatever I'm doing gets a slug through the forehead (I'll make Orrin feel special: I'll hit him in the nuts with a sledgehammer first).
I agree in theory, but in practice a vote libertarian is a vote for Bush. Just ask anybody who voted for Nader in 2000.
No no no no no, a vote for the Libertarian is supposidly taking votes away from the Republicans (because Libertarians are conservative.) thats why when I voted for Nader, even though I'm a conservative, the vote really counted for Bush.
Now, at least in Florida, a vote for Gore counted for Buchanan I don't understand this but I didn't make up this logic.
What I don't understand is if a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, and a vote for Browne (in 2000) is a vote for Gore, than who do you vote for if you actually want your vote to count for Nader?
If a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, does that mean a vote for Bush is a vote for Nader?
No, that' makes no sense.
I guess you have to vote for the other reform canidate if you actually want to vote for Nader. But no one remembers his name.
Maybe if we get even more 3rd party canidates there will actually be an enemy of my enemy to vote for so that you can actually vote 3rd party without your vote counting for a Republicrat.
But I've heard rumours that the Democrats are playing dirty tricks with Nader this year, and if that's true it really pisses me off. Could that backfire?
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
I will probably get modded into oblivion for this but i think it has to be done
The recent events of orin hatch that i was not able to comment on have just gone too far. there are allot of people on
- Register the domain www.nomoreorin.org and use it for a
organizational starting place to campaign against his reelection
- Gather all of the evidence and bills that he is against peoples
rights and is in the pay of the *aa
- Work to form a grass roots party in his hometown to make sure
that he is defeated buy a landslide in the next election.
- Try to set up rallys and protests in his community with pamphlets
that say
- Your senator wants to outlaw your VCR, Tivo, DVR
- Your senator wants to outlaw your computer
- Your senator wants to put viruses and destroy your
computer if you do something he doe sent approve of
- Your senator helped to put an innocent Russian
Civilian in jail without due process over writing an essentially legal
program.
- Your senator wants to remove your rights to make
backup copies of movies and software that you already own
- Your senator cares more about the *aa than the people
who elected him
- Your senator has accepted XXXXX$ from these *aa
groups
- Next target any and all politicians that have shown support for
the DMCA, INDUCE or have received an money from the *AA
- If we send a message to the government that clearly states that
- If you accept any money from the *AA we will see to it that
your political career is destroyed.
- Supporting any bill that restricts a users rights to media he
owns will result in your not getting elected.
It is evidently clear that if we do not act now. your right to use a computer or any kind of audio and visual media will be severely restricted.Depending on the replies to this post i will reserve and set up the
www.nomoreorin.org website.
and will do what i can to help a movement whose time have come
if you have any questions email me at
eric.aint.net (spam proof)