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Copyright Office Suggests Changes To Induce Act
An anonymous reader writes "The US Copyright Office has proposed a new version of the Induce act. Under this new version it is apparently more difficult to bring charges against a company for inducement. Stories on the subject can be found at DRMBlog.com and at News.com."
It's a start to change, but there's still a long way to go. The fact that they're still planning on outlawing P2P networks is crazy. I'm not going to bring up all the arguments about what P2P networks are and what could be illegal like has been done so many times before... but, are the people making this laws STUPID?
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Could it be another trick by Orin Hatch?
First have a proposed act that is so ridiculous no one can sanely accept it, then turn around and seem to offer a compromise, and suddenly the masses gobble it all up!
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From TFA: "Last week's meeting was attended by representatives from IBM, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, the Business Software Alliance, the RIAA and the Motion Picture Association of America." How come no one very interested in free speech is attending these meetings? I'd expect maybe the Creative Commons people, or someone similar to attend.
If you agree there are 1000 songwriters, composers, music publishers (combined with executives who get their share)...
I think you will find there are easily ten times that many people with their hand in the pot for that money. so there would only be $57K per "employee" -nB
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The RIAA and Apple are on the *same side*. Apple is the RIAAs best friend. They promise higher profits with lower overhead, just so long as that pesky competition to iTunes is crushed under the most severe of criminal penalties.
They both want it to be illegal to advertise P2P clients as a source for free entertainment. They both want Kazaa, morpheus, etc to dissappear. It hurts their respective business models.
The decision as to who is doing the "inducing" is up to them, and they can make it as arbitrarily as they want.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I can understand the regs on p2p software
You can? You understand it? Or you're willing to accept it? Or you just don't care? Because, I neither understand it nor am I willing to accept it. P2P has a myriad of legitimate uses, especially to someone running a *nix system.
See, the problem is that people go "Oh, well, they want to ban X? I don't use X, so that's alright." They don't think about the fact that it's X today, but hey, that just set a precedent for banning Y. Soon you're going "Aww crap, IM just got banned because it includes a file transfer feature. How did this happen?"
While I think the INDUCE act goes WAY to far in criminalizing things, I think something needs to be done about P2P networks that thrive on copyrighted material. There are legitimate uses for P2P (as many torrents show), but when something is used for 99.9% copyright violation, something needs to be done. If I ran a flea market and rented booth, I couldnst claim I didn't have any control over what was being sold. And if 99% of the booths sold illegal merchandise (stolen merchandise, illegal fireworks, drugs, etc) you can guarantee that the flea market would be shut down eventually. Plausible deniablility can and should only go so far.
Could Kazza be used for legitimate uses? Sure it could. But is it? Not a chance in hell. And they do nothing to try and even try to push people toward using it legitimately. P2P shouldn't be outlawed. But if 99% of your network is copyrighted material, and you are told this over and over again, and you do nothing to even pretend to try and correct the problem, then your network should be shut down. Common carrier status only works because most of the traffic is legitimate traffic. When all the traffic is in violation, then common carrier status doesn't help anyone and should be revoked.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Yes, it's easy to sit back and be shocked at the draconian measures that even this reduced-scale Induce bill promotes. I'm sure that the /. crowd will do more than an adequate job of pointing out the unfairness of it -- and I don't disagree with their condemnations.
However, for a person like myself who just wishes to lawfully make use of technology, I despise all of you on both extremes of this argument. That includes you fucking jackasses that continue to utterly abuse the rights of copyright holders with your weasely content stealing methods. Yeah, good job setting up your servers with the latest Hollywood movies, Silicon Valley games, etc.
Here's a big thanks from those of us in the middle who are caught up in your arms race of constantly increasing anti-piracy laws and pro-piracy techniques.
Thanks. Thanks a fucking lot.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
There wouldn't be activist judges overturning laws if there weren't activist Congressmen making them.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
If you want to change the law, get disgustingly rich and BUY a NEW one!
Jeez, it's like the commies never paid off a government official before!
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
- (A) 13 14 distributing any dissemination technology capable of substantial noninfringing uses knowing that it can be used for infringing purposes, so long as that technology is not designed to be used for infringing purposes;
P2P networks are capable of substantial noninfringing uses (whether or not they experience substantial noninfringing uses).So the question comes down to whether or not a P2P network is designed to be used for infringing purposes -- it seems there is some measure or intent that is required for this to be true, and that seems awfully hard to decide or prove one way or another. But, this is sufficiently ambiguous that it would need to be decided in a very messy court battle. Plus, this clause doesn't place any limitations on the extent of infringing purposes for which the technology must be designed - one could argue that if it allows even a single infringing use, it was designed that way, and therefore it was designed to be used for infringing purposes.
Of course, one could make the same claim about email.
People that sell weapons, tools, and cars better be punished too. I mean, they sold me that car, I had to run down the school children. They sold me the pistol, so I had to shoot someone. They sold me the chainsaw so I had to re-enact a movie that they produced.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
You're forgetting that in the RIAA's world, even if you legally bought the media at full price from a music store, ripping MP3s from it is piracy. By that logic, anyone that sells you the technology to rip mp3s is "inducing" you to steal music. It doesn't matter that a small percentage of iPod owners are actually ripping music they wrote and hold copyright on - the vast majority of owners are being encouraged to rip "illegally".
That's not necessarily my point of view, BTW. I've got some vinyl LPs that aren't out on CD, and if I ever get around to it, I'll be ripping them somehow...
In part because modern civilization and its economic model is based on technological advance which provides new opportunities for increasing the net output of society. If you stop, block, or slow technology, it's the entire civilization that suffers. Oh I know P2P is probably not a critical advance, but it's in its infancy, and we cannot truly know what it might bring us beyond the current applications. I've thought about how distributed computing and P2P technology could evolve and change the face of computing.
Also, the constitution is about the PEOPLE. It should, beyond any other purpose, serve the people who constitute the nation. Laws should also reflect the needs and wants of the people, and not of small groups and corporations. If the laws are badly implemented or irrelevant in a new society, they should be changed or annulled.
I don't want people who create works or invent, or think up new technologies to have those exploited by others for profit, but non-for-profit and personal use should not be outlawed.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Ask for a lot more than you expect to get. Then you can appear reasonable when you compromise down -- even as the resultant compromise exceeds your original, occulted goals.
This is what happens when pragmatism wins out over principle, but no one pays attention to that... same as when it happened with the DMCA, Mickey Mouse Copyright Act, AHRA, etc. Reactionary pragmatists come out in strong support for modifying it to strip some of its teeth away, dismissing campaigning on principle to abolish it as impractical... and the core of the law sits there festering on the books while the progress-minded pragmatists comfortably pat themselves on the back for a job well done.
Still is too vague
Oops, it seems you are already 50% sold on the law. You already took it for granted that we need some form of Induce Act, now we only need to agree on the specific text.
The truth is that there is no problem to solve with this law, except for the problem of failing business models. Have you actually seen or heard about those strange and dangerous people that go and induce people to break copyright law? Other than on Hatch's/RIAA speeches, of course...
I haven't. There is no need for this law, regardless of how vague/specific it is.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Copyright law is over? You have to be kidding. Yes, the RIAA and MPAA and similar groups are greedy jerks, and so on and so forth, and the Creative Commons is noble and wonderful and all that, but the fact is big business has power. I really expect that we'll see a "war on piracy" that's quite similar to the current "war on drugs". Sure, it can't be "won", and piracy will continue, but people *will* go to jail, and what's more a majority of non-technologically oriented people will think it's a good thing ("those pirates are trying to destroy HOLLYWOOD! Throw the book at 'em")
first, that is not irrefutable. do you think it's the piracy or the 'Broken Business Models' that is causing the problem? because if you think it's the latter i don't see how you understand the regs to be worthwhile. you did make both statements however.
and yes, i would support a ban on guns if it miraculously happened. because they induce DEATH, by design, not copyright infringement through alternate uses.
if p2p killed thousands of people a year i'd want it banned too.
???!!!%%%### yeah!!!
- I'd prefer not to.
On the contrary. Until something is done to curb the rampant abuse of existing laws (and legal precedents) by the lawyers, this is exactly what we need, and will continue to need. Until we can somehow stop them from exploiting the smaller loopholes (which always exist), the solution to the problem cannot be leaving even larger ones.
That isn't to say that I disagree with what you believe in principal (or at least, what I think you believe) -- that the legal system, and the ideas our forefathers set forth in the form of checks and balances, has become so corrupted it is essentially worthless. To that, I agree.
This is like debating what came first -- the chicken, or the egg. Are the lawmakers creating laws in order to receive financial perks, or because they receive financial perks? The answer is that it doesn't really matter. Again, we have a situation that can't be dealt with by the current legal system. Those who pass the laws will never implement a law wherein they are no longer allowed to receive these perks (ie, get rid of lobbyists, who sadly, have just as much power as those belonging to the legal/political/insurance money-triangle/orgy).
We could go on and on, debating the good and the bad and recalling instances of abuse and corruption and problems. But we don't have to. We can agree that changes need to be made, and that they can't be made by the current system, which loves itself too much to destroy itself.
The answer might be that the entire system needs to be uprooted, and new seeds replanted by the governed. Not by those in power, or by those whom others say "let s/h/it make my decisions for me." Rather, by those who say "this is how my life would be if I were running things, and I'm speaking only for myself, and none other."
Unfortunately, the world is too well connected for this to happen. Were we, the people, to revolt, and destroy every shread of our current legal/governmental system, we would quickly find a host of other countries on our doorstep, eager to take us over and make us their own. And it would work. It would, no if's, and's, or but's. And then we would be right back at square one, or perhaps farther back, a Goliath sized (insert principality with some, but not all, rights here).
So what is the solution? Hell if I know... (rant cut short by lack of time
Ack!
Illissius: Explain why copyrights need to last 90 years.
RIAA (for example): We have to protect the rights of artists to profit from their work.
Illissius: But they can profit on a much shorter timescale than 90 years. And making copyright shorter will encourage more creativity, since people won't be able to just create one thing and then rest on their laurels for years on end.
RIAA: Well we have to prevent piracy, which takes away huge amounts of money from these poor starving artists.
Illissius: What? That doesn't make sense! You didn't even answer my--
RIAA: Sorry, we have to go.
* RIAA runs off and continues bribi^H^H^H^H^Hgiving campaign contributions to lawmakers.
Logically, you're right; it's not a good solution for them, but it is for everyone else. However the RIAA has something that the rest of us don't:1) Billions of dollars to spend on lobbying lawmakers;
2) Employees (lobbyists) with long experience convincing those lawmakers to do bad things.
As much as we here on /. (and other fora) bitch about it, unless we put together a concerted, organized, directed, and above all well-funded effort to convince lawmakers otherwise, we're screwed.
It's a bleak picture, but not hopeless. In the long run I think the RIAA will eventually lose, namely because all the laws they create will not stem the tide of casual piracy, eventually things will come to a head, and all the money in the world can't buy off fifty million pissed-off Joe Sixpacks who just want to download free music.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
People have morals, not corporations. "The stockholders" (as a group entity) don't have morals.
A corporation is going to maximize profit and minimize risk. Those are the survival rules for corporations.
Corporations are going to try to keep as much control as they can, and that's why they use whatever monopolistic, power-grabbing tactics they can. It minimizes risk.
Don't expect corporations to behave like people. They aren't people. They're machines trying to optomize an equation.
It is still completely absurd that they can outlaw something that 'induces' someone to be music pirates or what have you. Guns are still legal. Could those induce someone to go on a shooting spree? There are perfectly legal uses for p2p. Congress must realize that destroying something because of bad side effects dispite monumental good uses is totally and utterly inane.
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting be
Now define not-for profit and personal use. Should PETA be allowed to use music, speeches, and photographs to promote their causes? What if I as an artist disagree with PETA? What rights do I now have to stop them from using my work? What if they alter part of a photograph o fmine and change the meaning to the exact opposite? One could argue that stadiums do not earn revenue from the use of songs during spoting events, the people are there to watch a game after all regardless of whether or not music is playing. Should they be allowed to use music without licensing it first and paying the artists?
As for personal use, should I be allowed to distribute music via P2P or give it out to friends? How is that personal use exactly since I'm not personally involved with interacting with the art? Couldn't one argue that value is being placed on these works, albeit not monetary, and thus they are creating a commercial enterprise around the trading of intellectual property?
As with most problems the answer lies in the middle and both extremes are wrong, including you. Creative Commons licenses are one area I happen to agree with Lessig. They put the power to allow greater use of their work squarely on the backs of the artist which is where it should be. Any other solution is either trying to "get shit for free" or "locking up art for eternity", neither of which is good for the art community and for the public at large.
Most of em are also not of the same generation as those who use P2P. By and large the people who will be using Kazaa (so far as I can tell) are those in the 16-29 crowd wheras (the last time that I checked) most U.S. Lawmakers were in the 35+ crowd. Moreover the U.S. (unlike other countries such as France) does not make a habit of electing technically trained individuals. We have a few doctors and Psychologists (3 total in Congress I believe), but by and large out lawmakers ate taken from Legal, Government, or Business-trained individuals, hence this kind of profit-centric anti-technology thinking.