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."

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HTML Text and Analysis

[The Importance of]

I've posted both the email the Copyright Office sent out and the HTML version of the "discussion draft" along with some initial analysis here: Copyright Office Produces 'Discussion Draft' Alternative to INDUCE Act (IICA). My basic take is that although this bill is an improvement, that doesn't mean much. Instead of being ludicrously overbroad, it is now only excessively overbroad.

Radical Rogue 9th Circuit Court!

[garcia]

Now groups like the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and their allies in Congress are scrambling for legislation such as the Induce Act that would overturn the 9th Circuit's ruling.

Does this mean that the 9th Circuit is a radical judge making rulings based on personal opinion? I especially love the term "allies in Congress" as if this is some sort of important war.

Re:Radical Rogue 9th Circuit Court!

[dafz1]

IANAL, but I do have a degree in Poli Sci, and the INDUCE Act couldn't "overturn the 9th Circuit's ruling". The INDUCE Act will just be a not filed injunction in reality.

The Supreme Court, which has the tradition of judicial review, which allows it to overturn laws they see as unconstituional. The Betamax case, which doesn't specifically site a constitutional cause, allows use of technology in a non-infringing manner, even though the manufacturer knows it could be(gleaned from the Grokster decision). Unless the RIAA/MPAA have justices in their pocket, it's doubtful this law will be able to stand up to the Betamax standard. Then again, Orrin Hatch is chair of the Senate Judiciary committee, the first stop for federal(and Supreme) court justice appointees.

Note: I'n not volunteering to be the person to be the case that tries the INDUCE act, should this awful piece of legislation pass, against the Betamax standard.

Re:Radical Rogue 9th Circuit Court!

[danila]

I was always confused about this whole lawmaking thing. It seems to me there are already too many laws and there is no need for thousands of people working full-time on making more. It's not like we need a law for every goddamn possible situation.

The problem is when there is no need for lawmakers, they invent that need themselves, simply because by making themselves useful they can get bribes from campaign contributors. They are just like bureaucracy in this sense.

Re:Radical Rogue 9th Circuit Court!

[Dirtside]

But when Congress makes a stupid law, and the law will never be repealed because special interests spend so much money keeping congresspersons in their pockets, our only real alternative is to have "activist judges" abort those stupid laws. (Or a violent revolution; take your pick.)

Maybe they "go above their mandate," but Congress's implied mandate is to make laws for the good of all the people, not for the good of a handful of corporations and their shareholders. If Congress isn't going to play fair, why should the courts?

Still is too vague

[Manip]

Scenario: If I had a CD and I lend it to my friend Fred. Now Fred wants to listen to this CD but based on this new copyright law couldn't I be inducing him to commit break copyright law because I have given him the digital media which makes it easier to copy?

Did anyone else notice how this law can be used to restrict information because you can induce someone to commit copyright infringement without providing links or files. I mean if I tell someone how to make a crack for a game by providing only locations and hex changes, I could be inducing them to break copyright couldn't I?

Artists are NOT suffering

[flinxmeister]

http://bmi.com/news/200408/20040818a.asp

"The performing rights organization generated royalties of more than $573 million for its songwriters, composers and music publishers. Royalties increased by $40 million or 7.5% from the previous year.

BMI President and CEO Frances W. Preston said both the revenues and royalty distributions were the largest in the company's history."

Sooner or later this 800 pound gorilla is going to trample their manufactured crisis.

Re:Artists are NOT suffering

[black mariah]

BMI claims to represent over 300,000 artists. Let's do some math.

$573,000,000 / 300,000 = $1910 per year

Re:Artists are NOT suffering

[flinxmeister]

I'll take kneejerk reactions without reading for 500 million, Alex.

Please read my post and my link, before calling me "full of shit"...(colossally even!) I never said anything about the RIAA and/or MPAA.

The article is from BMI. Anyone can join BMI, from the individual artist (like me) to the largest publisher. The fact that BMI is collecting record revenue and royalty payments means that the money is flowing regardless of what's happening with Kazaa/Morpheus/etc.

The fact that you don't see much of this money will NOT change with the INDUCE act...in fact it will probably get worse if the INDUCE act is passed because it will stifle the very innovation that is changing the system waaay for the better for musicians like you and I.

In short, this guy that's "full of shit" is full of the same opinion you are. The real exploitation is happening with the old status quo, not the new world of "illegal" downloading.

Re:Artists are NOT suffering

[KitFox]

Soooo...
Your original post actually had nothing whatsoever to do with anything? *confused*.

The post that you were responding to was pointing out that even though the music industry claims that they are hurting because of P2P, they are reporting increases in various numbers that indicate the opposite. Nobody ever said that artists were making millions per year. They just pointed out that the dollar amount going to artists was going up (By 7.5% in fact), and that makes it more difficult to say "The music industry is hurting because of P2P!"

Unfortunately, their quantification of "The music industry is hurting" seems to be based on "Well, we sold this much, but we THINK we should have sold THIS much more." and "Everybody who has a copy of this song/album that didn't pay for it is (insert price of CD here) lost revenue!"

Now, I guess one could say that more artists are coming on the bandwagon, and so that number should be going up much faster to accomodate them. Thus implying that there is less for everybody. But forgive me when I don't have a bleeding heart for this issue either. Did we mention that the economy, at least in the US, stinks worse than a roadkill skunk in Florida after 2 weeks in the sun and humidity?

As such, summary and from personal experience, which is likely to be duplicated:

1) "There are fewer CD sales! (It must be because of P2P!)"... Well, I used to buy CD's. When I had money, I'd buy an average of 5-6 CD's per month. Now I don't have much money, thank you US economy, and what I do have is going towards more important things like housing and food and utilities. CD's are the last thing on my mind.

2) "Every P2P download is a lost sale." Uh, no. I listen to obscure music that doesn't play on the radio. Not to mention that I don't want to invest hours listening to the radio mindlessly hoping that the song I want to check will come on. So I download it to see how it is. And well over 99% of the time, I delete it shortly thereafter. But according to them, I'm a lost sale!! $17.99 lost to them for each song that I downloaded (And no longer have). As if I'd spend $17.99 to find out that I want to throw the CD away. ("But that under 1% of the time, you're stealing!!" I still wouldn't buy the record for $17.99. I suppose I could download it from something online like iTunes, but then it's not worth the cost, hassle, and cost of my time. But fine, I'll concede that anyway. (Counts) So the record companies have lost $15 in iTunes downloads on me. Oh, and Apple has lost hundreds on an iPod on me, because I burned the 15 MP3s to an MP3 CD so I could listen to them in my car. Riiiiight.)

I don't think the current system works. I don't think the theft is a good thing. But honestly, if I could pay $0.50 for a song, and know that $0.25 is going to the artist, and $0.25 is going to infrastructure, and it's not bogged down in DRM, then that would be a hell of a lot easier, and finally worth my time as compared to P2P. Heck, at that point, I'd STILL P2P and delete 99%, but I'd get the paid-for versions of the songs that I keep.

So, what did your math actually accomplish? I mean, even it's not accurate, because it's not a matter of $xxxx per artist, it's more a matter of "These 5% of artists get $xxx,xxx and the rest get $xx or $0, since they are still busy waiting for their sales to exceed baseline limits." And it fails to mention that with that royalties value, hundreds times more than that was actually transferred in media sales. A tiny chunk of that went to materials cost. A tiny chunk went to distribution and retail salespeople, advertisements, etc. A tiny chunk went to royalties (Sent to the actual artists). And a huge chunk went into the pockets of the multimillionaires who run the label companies. Find me any artist who makes a lot of money, and I can almost guarentee their label makes more off them then they make of themself.

THAT is what needs fixing. Getting the money into the hands of the people who actually PRODUCED the product.

IRC?

[StevenHenderson]

The U.S. Copyright Office has drafted a new version of the Induce Act that it believes will ban networks like Kazaa and Morpheus while not putting hardware such as portable hard drives and MP3 players on the wrong side of the law.

Does this umbrella cover IRC - something that has a (supposedly) legitimate use? I can understand the regs on p2p software, but can't IRC users say "we're just chatting..."?

Re:It's a start...

[garcia]

but, are the people making this laws STUPID?

Greed is a powerful thing. The laws are being made by people who enjoy the perks of working for the corporations.

Inducing people....

[thewiz]

IANAL and IANAPO (I am not a police officer), but how to you "induce" someone to commit an illegal act? If the person has criminal tendencies they are (eventually) going to do something criminal.

How can the RIAA believe that Apple and the other makers of MP3/WMA/etc players are trying to "induce" people into stealing music? My iPod has a very legitimate use: holding my entire music library in MP3 form so I can enjoy it anywhere I go (BTW: I own all the CDs I've ripped to MP3). I really don't care to carry 500+ CDs on me at all times so I can pop the right on into a CD player when the mood hits me.

Idiots....

Re:It's an infringement to lend a CD

[Anonymous Coward]

What if we change the wording, and said...

"I bought a CD. Then I gave it to Fred, free of charge, and when he was done listening to it, he gave it to me, also free of charge." :-)

Re:A potential advantage...

[DaFallus]

That is all this law is. Apparently no one is able to think for themselves anymore. This whole Inducement Act crosses a line which the government was not meant to cross and its all because the government is nothing more than a pawn of large corporations. This act inhibits our freedom of speach by taking away personal accountability. The only way someone could actually induce you to do something would be if they had a gun to your head, in which case it might be better to let them kill you instead of having to see what future the RIAA and the MPAA hold for technology in this country.

Just read this atrocious lie:

"The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) takes an uncompromising stand against censorship and for the First Amendment rights of all artists to create freely. From the nation's capital to state capitals across the country, RIAA works to stop unconstitutional action against the people who make the music of our times--and those who enjoy it."

Dialog box loophole?

[patbob]

The draft of the act says:

".. causes the user of the technology to infringe copyrighted works without the user making a specific, informed decision, for each copyrighted work at issue, about whether to engage in such infringement; "

Doesn't this mean that all the file sharing programs have to do, is to pop up a dialog box for each file that is can't verify the user has the rights to download? Wouldn't that give the user a specific, informed decision about every file and also remove the program from inducing infringement by the terms of this draft?

Not sure about that.

[einhverfr]

First-- lending him the CD by itself is not infringement. But if he asks to borrow it because he wants to make copies for, say, five friends, it seems to be perfectly reasonable to say that this is inducement.

Now, IANAL, but I am wondering about crazier scenarios here. What if I loan my CD to my friend and he makes a copy which is allowed (but probably infringing) under the Home Recording act. My understanding is that the Home Recording Act merely prevents prosecution for certain types of infringement, not actually classifying them as non-infringing. He is not liable, but am I?

Another example. "Send your documents more effectively through Microsoft Exchange Server" can reasonably be expected to cause at least one person to email illegal MP3's over Microsoft Exchange, so is Microsoft liable?

Of course this probably doesn't matter. Long ago during the Napster era, ad-hoc P2P networks arose. Even if Grokster turns out the lights and shuts down their servers, the network that they created will continue to be accessible using open source Gnutella clients. So none of these laws address the P2P issue for the recording industry. As such, they simply represent a power grab by a frightened industry whose current business model is threatened by technology in general.

Re:INDUCE not good, but something needed

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Proof, my friend; you need proof. Do you have scientific, documented, and incontrovertable evidence that 99.9% of the material available to download from Kazaa, et. al. is violating copyright? If you do, I'd like to see it. Or do you just have anecdotal evidence that "everyone knows" that Kazaa, et.al. is used 99.9% of the time to violate copyrights?

Re:It's an infringement to lend a CD

[955301]

Good workaround this time.

And, if you own a company, then not only are you not breaking any laws, you can write off the lost goods. So your coporation buys the cd and you, as a rep of the company lose it, Fred finds it, loses it. You as an individual find it again.

Give it back to the company as capital stock when you want to "lose" it again. Love this country.

501(3)(a)

[Sloppy]

(3) For the purposes of this subsection, and absent any other overt act, an "overt act" does not include:

(A) 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;

With that exemption, I just don't understand how this act accomplishes anything. This is a complete waste of legislative effort. Any technology is going to be capable of substantial noninfringing use. Indeed, it's very hard (impossible) for tech to even know when it is infringing and when it is not.

I would like to hear a hypothetical example of any plausible scenario, where this act could somehow be used against someone for disseminating technology.

Re:Anyone sensible even attending?

[Alsee]

Why? Because at the other meeting the EFF and other public-oriented groups said all sorts of things Hatch did not like. They showed it was a bad bill and poked all sorts of holes in it. Hell, even the RIAA representitive pretty much had to conceed their points that there were ugly problems with the bill.

It's much easier to ram through the bill you want if you can keep the opposition out of the room.

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