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."

Comments

It's a start...

[ahsile]

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?

Re:It's a start...

[garcia]

Ah, more leftist tripe from garcia. Clearly any desire to maintain ownership of property is labeled as "greed"... until its your property in question.

Perhaps I wasn't clear... The government officials that are accepting payoffs to put through laws favorable to the coroporations are greedy.

Re:It's a start...

[dgatwood]

Here's a thought. Vote. If you live in Utah or Vermont, vote for the strongest opponent of Hatch or Leahy. It's pretty bad when a normally-hard-line Democrat advocates voting out a Democrat, but there, I just said it.

Tennesseeans, vote against Frist. He's a sponsor. South Dakotans? Daschle. Vote them out. If enough of the bill's sponsors are voted out of office, this bill will die as it should. With the exception of Graham in South Carolina, they're -all- up for reelection this year. Vote these corporate tools out of office. Tell all your friends to vote against them, too, and tell them why.

The INDUCE act is typical of what happens when a bunch of idiots think that they can legislate against social change. They tried it with prohibition and with segregation. Look how well those worked. The result of this law, if passed? Nothing. The people who maintain this software will suddenly be replaced by people in other countries. People will continue to violate the draconian copyright laws. P2P will become more and more untraceable and more and more secure. The end result will be that the MPAA/RIAA will lose the current benefits of P2P (tracking popularity), but their efforts will do nothing to stem the tide of illegal downloading.

The reality is that copyright law as we know it is over. Regardless of your views on whether copyright law is still valuable (and personally, I think it is), the public of the world has spoken. They have committed en masse acts of civil disobedience. There is no going back. The people pushing for this bill are trying to stop a train going at full tilt with no one behind the wheel. And while I, as a supporter of -reasonable- copyright, wish it weren't so, the cat is out of the bag. They watched and did nothing as the Internet became a popular mechanism for getting music, and in doing nothing, lost their right to do anything.

The world is a different place than it was before Napster, and no matter how much the people in power want to go back, wishing won't make it so. The sooner they accept this and work to find mechanisms for making money in spite of the inevitability of P2P, the sooner they'll be profitable again. The harder they try to fight technology, the more they will lose.

Remember: VOTE

Shut that HATCH

[Gentlewhisper]

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!

Anyone sensible even attending?

[ajayvb]

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.

Re:INDUCE not good, but something needed

[JonnyCalcutta]

when something is used for 99.9% copyright violation, something needs to be done.

Quite right! Probably the best idea is to get rid of the laws being violated. Or to put it another way, when even a large minority of people do something it is crazy to make that thing illegal. Laws should reflect the whole of society rather than just being a tool for certain well placed minority groups to mould everyone else.

If you don't like the way that concept of 'freedom' pans out then, as you American's like to say, why not give communist China a try.

very squishy

[The_Bagman]

Here's the really interesting exclusion (i.e., something that does not count as an overt act that is liable):

• (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.

I see.

[Renraku]

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.

Oldest political trick in the book!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.