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

Re:I should probably RTFA, but...

[stratjakt]

saying: "Download KazAAm for $5.00 and get access to all the copyrighted songs and movies you want!" is "inducement".

saying: "KazAAm 2.0 is released, it is a P2P network designed for decentralized distribution of binary files" isn't.

Sort of like selling a smartcard reader/writer is no crime, but advertising it as a tool to hack DirecTV is.

Frankly, there are regulations governing other businesses that could be "shady". Most municipalities have pawn shops licensed and required to report every transaction, and it's illegal for them (or anyone else) to knowingly buy stolen goods.

I think the goal here is to stop companies from profitting by promoting an illegal product. The law probably sucks though, because laws always go to far.

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!

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

[Anonymous Coward]

Excuse me, but for lack of a better way of putting it, you're colossally full of shit.

As a member of the American Federation of Musicians (I am a freelance musician in Chicago) who has performed and recorded in royalty-pay situations, I can tell you that the artists are the FIRST to get the shaft.

Yes, recording companies will tell you that royalty pay increases, but they never seem to release a breakdown of who gets that pay. I would venture to say that the majority of it does not go to artists like myself, who play on your film scores, your commercials, for whom this is a daily living, not the difference between the 1.2 million dollar or the 2.1 million dollar house.

It's the media conglomerates that are the gorillas here. Royalty checks for those like myself are insulting at best. (This is why I have a day job in IT for now.)

Please do not EVER confuse the RIAA and MPAA with actual ARTISTS.

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

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.

Insightful quote for those who don't RTFA...

[GillBates0]

by Will Rodger, director of public policy at the Computer and Communications Industry Association:

"First it was the Hollings bill, then Induce, now the Copyright Office's bill. They look different, but they all revolve around the same thing: Giving content (providers) veto power over all new technology," Rodger said. "Who decided that holders of government-granted monopolies should determine the future of high tech? I don't remember reading that memo."

Mirrors my feelings exactly. Just goes to show that companies (with convenient government puppets) will stop at nothing to establish monopoly over everything in their power.

Re:I should probably RTFA, but...

[ipgeek]

"inducement" as a legal term with a specific meaning in intellectual property law. It typically means that someone is doing something which would *not* strictly speaking be considered an infringement of a copyright or a patent. But what they are doing is "inducing" infringement, i.e. causing, encouraging, soliciting others to infringe.

It's a concept that carries over from criminal law. It's sort of like, hey, she didn't commit the crime, but she did solicit others to do it for her, or something like that.

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?

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.

Form letter from Orrin Hatch

[cvd6262]

Well, I posted the email I sent to Hatch
here. This was the 3rd time I've contacted him, and the other twimes, he (or whoever answers his mail) always personalized the response, addressing specific concerns and questions I had. This time, it seems to be nothing more than a form letter. Enjoy!

----Begin Letter----

Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns about the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 (S. 2560). I appreciate your comments and apologize for the delay in my response.

The media have widely broadcast misconceptions about the intent and purpose of this bill, spreading concerns that S 2560 would outlaw Google, eBay, iPods, VCRs, TiVos, computers, CD burners, recordable DVDs, and a litany of other multi-use devices and Internet service providers. Let me be clear: This legislation was not designed to have any effect on these or future technological innovations, and I will work to ensure the final bill that is considered by Congress meets those criteria.

S. 2560 has one goal - to crack down on those whose intended purpose and sole business model is to induce children, teenagers, and others to illegally download copyrighted music and movies for free. Without the illegal copying, these filesharing companies would be out of business, yet they amass huge profits while their customers are being forced to pay thousands of dollars in damages to the copyright owners. This bill is merely an attempt to close the safe-harbor loophole that these companies are using to knowingly lure their victims into this illegal activity and make them face legal liability for their actions.

From the beginning, I have worked with the technology industries to craft S. 2560 so it targets only a small group of bad actors without affecting legitimate technology interests, and I will continue to work with them to ensure that we find the best way to achieve this goal. I certainly welcome any proposed improvements or alternatives to the approach taken in @. 2560.

Again, thank you fro writing.

Sincerely,
[Sig]
Orrin G. Hatch
United States Senator

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.