Alternatives To The INDUCE Act

The Importance of writes "The INDUCE Act, which has been discussed many times previously, will likely be getting a lot more attention thanks to the recent Grokster decision. The Register of Copyrights, who thinks the Betamax decision should be overturned, is supposed to come up with a consensus fix to the current language of the bill by Sept. 7. So, various people are proposing alternative solutions to the INDUCE Act. C|Net reports on one coalition's version [PDF] [HTML]. However, there are also versions by Prof. Tim Wu [PDF] [HTML], IEEE-USA [PDF] [HTML] and Ernie Miller [HTML]." Read more below about the proposed "Don't Induce" act.

Iphtashu Fitz writes "The 'Don't Induce Act' proposes that only someone who distributes a commercial computer program that is 'specifically designed' for wide-scale piracy on digital networks could be held liable for copyright violations. The proposal includes three requirements that must be met before a software distributor can be found liable: The 'predominant' use of the program must be the mass, indiscriminate infringing redistribution of copyrighted works; the 'commercial viability of the computer program' must depend on revenue derived from piracy; and the software distributor must have 'undertaken conscious, recurring, persistent and deliberate acts' to encourage copyright infringement. No surprise that the MPAA and RIAA are opposed to this 'watered down' bill. MPAA vice president Fritz Attaway showed his organizations true colors by stating that the Don't Induce Act was so narrowly drafted it would be impossible to use it to shutter even operators of peer-to-peer networks."

Comments

Dear Mr. Attaway

[Anonymous Coward]

You oppose the Don't Induce Act, because it is "so narrowly drafted it would be impossible to use it to shutter even operators of peer-to-peer networks."
Now this may come as a surprise to you but this exactly is the purpose of this Act.

This may even further surprise you but there are other uses for modern means of communication (e.g. computers, internet) then sharing "pirated" software. That is why a lot of people don't want your concerns about software piracy to hinder the free flow of information more then necessary and the Don't Induce Act is addressing these concerns.

I hope this helped clear things up a little bit for you.
Thank you for your time.

Regards,
AC

Idiotic

[Sarastrobert]

Bah, If they are to sue Apple and other MP3 player manufacturers then why not sue everyone that makes CD players also since they could be playing illegally copied CD's. Not to mention manufacturers of CD/DVD writers. They are all pirates!!!

Re:Idiotic

[Tjebbe]

Yes. Well, I don't think I am being extremely pessimistic here in thinking that will be one of the next steps. I seem to remember just having read something about companies being sued for making 'unlicensed' DVD players...

After that (and now i am being pessimistic) i would not even be surprised if they start to try to making unlicensed *content* illegal.

If these people are not stopped they will take more and more of our rights (and money) until everything belongs to them.

Re:I still don't get it.

[Tjebbe]

They tried to make the vcr illegal too (as well as the cassette). They failed. We did end up with the 'copy tax' thing on every blank media.

Let's hope the system isn't too coorporationalized that they succeed completely this time.

What might a viable Induce Act look like?

[Sanity]

Will it ever be possible to target the makers of Kazaa and Morpheus, without the supposedly unintended consequences that everyone worries about?

Now, obviously the law can't simply name the companies it wants to get rid of, so there has to be some kind of test to identify these "bad actors". The fundamental problem (for the Induce Act) is that there may not exist an objective test that can effectively isolate those they wish to isolate, meaning that the Induce Act will inevitably require a subjective test. Subjective tests must be clarified by litigation, but it only requires the threat of litigation to torpedo many potentially valuable new technologies before they even get out of the angel investor's office.

It is therefore my suspicion that it will be impossible to rewrite the Induce Act such that it addresses the concerns of the IEEE, CEA, EFF, and others, while still achieving its stated goal. This probably means that the current effort to come up with a compromise is unlikely to bear fruit. I doubt the situation is improved by the fact that the person charged with achieving this compromise is the Register of Copyrights, Mary Beth Peters, who has a more anti-technology view than even the RIAA will comfortably admit to.

Whatever happens, I am sure that history will regard the Induce Act as the most violent death throe yet of a powerful and influential industry. Lets hope they don't take too many useful technologies down with them.

Possible solution

[Peter_JS_Blue]

The problem with the music industry seems to be this :-

1. Spend lots of cash on creating music in expensive studios.
2. Spend more cash distributing music to shops.
3. Customers buy music.
4. Music industry and Artists earns cash.
5. Some customers copy music for friends
6. Music industry and Artists loose "potential" cash.
7. Music industry spends even more cash trying to stop people copying music
8. Lots of unhappy customers.

Possible Solution

1. Artist create music using cheap digital tools - these are already available.
2. Artist uploads digital music to web sites
3. Lots of people download / copy music for free
4. Artist gets well known by lots of people
5. Artist does a gig - lots of people pay to come
6. Artist gets paid further by selling special CDs,DVDs or other merchandise on web site.
7. RIAA now totally redundant - I think they already know this.
8. Do same thing with software (Already happening - OSS)
9. Do same thing with movie industry
10. Do same thing with all forms of information
11. Human race leaps forward, as it tends to do when information is freely available

I know some people already planning some of this !!