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Induce Act Stalled For Now
Neil Wehneman writes "The AP is reporting, through Newsday, the great news that the Induce Act is not going anywhere this legislative term. Thanks to everyone who took action in various ways, although there's a strong chance we'll see this type of bill again soon. Additional thanks go to Copyfight for the initial heads-up."
I was never really worried about this bill.
Quite frankly, it's new media vs. old media, and each side has their pet legislators and lobbyists.
And, in the game of law-passing, it's easier to stall something to death than it is to pass it through. Do Nothings always beat Do Somethings.
Especially in government.
Orrin Hatch wrote some songs 100 years ago and is obsessed with protecting his own interests, over his sworn duty, to serve the interests of the common citizen.
Nothing to see here; Move along.
I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that typically government and corporate America work hand in hand. Corporate America isn't swayed by words like terrorism. As if they give a fuck about terrorism. Rebuilding's good for them in general. Did you notice that the first thing Bush said after 9/11 was "don't stop spending"? Government helps out corporations so that they can keep lining their pockets.
We need a senator going off the geek vote to introduce a short bill that merely confirms that tbe Betamax Law applies to current technology. Who's our Senator? Who could be? Let's get to work now.
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make install -not war
On Sunday I went to a lil rally for Senator Tom Daschle, a supporter of this bill sadly.
I told him how concerned I was about Induce and asked why he was supporting it... he explained that some of his friends talked to him about their concerns regarding their losses due to piracy.
Thankfully, he did say that that he didn't think the current revision of the bill was very good and did believe that more work was needed.
We spoke for about 10 minutes on the issue (I think I miffed the national guardsman in line behind me).
One interesting note... I mentioned the savebetamax campaign and he knew nothing about it... his aid admitted that they had received 'a few calls' on the topic... either they were lying... or not enough calls were made it seems.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Loved the bit: "So long as illegitimate peer-to-peer services hijack a positive technology and intentionally offload their legal liability to America's kids, legislation will be a priority for the creative community," Bainwol said. Oh yes the big bad p2p companys are forcing there wares onto unsuspecting kids. Forcing them into a life time of slavery to downloading copyright software.
[posting anonlymously because I'm a senate staffer]
Something worth mentioning - Sen. Hatch is outgoing chair of the Senate Judiciary committee. GOP rules limit chairmanships to 6 years, and his time is up. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is likely to be chairman in the next congress.
There have been rumors that Hatch is pushing to reconstitute the intellectual property subcommittee, but even with a subcommittee chair he'll be alot less powerful next session than he is now. He could push bills out of his subcommittee and have them bottled in the full committee, or significantly modified during full committee markup.
Specter isn't known for being in touch with IT/IP issues. This is a double edged sword. As committee chair he's likely to give significant leeway to Hatch on IP issues in order to focus on investigations and other legislation. Conversely, without strongly stated public views on copyright/IP issues, Specter will probably be receptive to lobbying. If the EFF/OSDN/Sun/Others effectively represent their issues, they'll be much better off with Chairman Specter than Chairman Hatch. If they blow it --- 6 more years of the same.
A few wrinkles - Specter is up for election and may end up losing his seat. Also, Sen. Grassley is second in seniority on the Judiciary committee. Senators can only chair one committee at a time, and conventional beltway wisdom is that Sen. Grassley will not relinquish his current chairmanship (Finance) in order to take Judiciary, leaving it to Specter.
Because the major record labels and the movie studios-- the same companies that opposed the Betamax ruling-- make huge donations to the re-election campaigns of the Senators who are sponsoring this legislation
It will probably become a pissing contest between electronics companies and record labels. Electronics makers/distributors/retailers have alot more money, and more importantly employ alot more voters than the labels. What most likely will happen is some watered down bill that goes against P2P and/or other "outside the corporate structure" copying methods. So betamax will be protected as long as you are running a megacorp.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
This type of crap usually skips over the pond to here about 5 - 10 years after its attacked the US. Just out of curiosity, since the INDUCE act would probably force a great deal of companies to change thier manufacturing process', ie move out of the US, not to import, make americans redundant; would this violate the PATRIOT act? Could the bozo,s who legislate and lobbied for it be prosecuted?
In the end, It's all bovine dung you know
I've been reading Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture, and found it very insightful.
Point out all the times that corporations supporting old technologies have lobbied congress against new technologies citing piracy, property rights, and labeling their competitors as criminals. Congress has never given in to illegalizing newer, superior technologies in favor of old technologies controlled by a handful of massive corporations, until recently.
The constitution gave Congress the power to grant copyrights for only a limited term and for the sole purpose of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts. This is still what it says today, and I (and many others) believe that Congress has violated the constitution in over-extending the reach of copyrights and increasing their lifetime indefinitely. The current trend is that copyrights will never expire, and the information is simply lost to the world because they're out of print and copies are discarded when they get too old. This nonesense going in Congress is not only destroying our future but our past as well.
You know what radio stations have to pay recording artists and major labels? Nothing. They pay directly to the composers and song writers a small, fixed amount defined by Congress (back when it understood the purpose of copyright) because letting the recording industry set the price threatened the new distribution technology in favor of old physical media. Now the recording industry is after P2P, seeking to destroy the superior competing technology rather than finding a balance.
The battle fought by the RIAA isn't about copyrights or piracy, it's about control of the media, and how media is created and distributed.