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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."
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.