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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."
- ...aimed at manufacturers of file-sharing software commonly used to steal electronic copies of music, movies and computer programs...
Wasn't there a more, how shall I put this... unbiased way to word the intro to this article??No, it tells you an election is coming up and they don't want to be asked about this in the last 30 days before people vote.
That is all that has happened, nothing else.
Look, folks, this bill isn't dead yet. It's true that its scheduled committee vote was canceled, but Congress will reconvene briefly in November to pass several appropriations bills. Watch for the bill's supporters to try to tack it onto one of these big bills. If they can do that, it can easily sail through Congress as the end of the legislative session draws near, and Congress rushes to get necessary budget bills passed. This is a common tactic, and it often works.
So don't even think of celebrating until Congress adjourns for the year.
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.
I love it, it allows me to be politically active and relatively lazy at the same time.
No, it tells you an election is coming up and they don't want to be asked about this in the last 30 days before people vote.
That is all that has happened, nothing else.
That is probably the most relevant post you'll see in this thread. Don't read the article with a sigh of relief and attribute it to the long overdue arrival of common sense on capital hill.
Be prepared to do whatever you can to defend your online rights in 30 days. If you still think this is just a bunch of hype, or don't understand what is at stake, please take a moment to read this article.
The Betamax ruling is the only thing that protects your right to own a VCR, tape recorder, CD-burner, DVD-burner, iPod, or TiVo. It's that important. But new legislation that's being pushed through the Senate by lobbyists for the music and movie industries would override the Betamax decision and create a huge liability for any business that makes products which can copy sound or video. This legislation (formerly known as the INDUCE Act) would essentially give Hollywood veto power over a huge range of new technologies.
Another great quote which describes the situation well:
Is Congress Insane?
You might think so at first glance. Voters, technology experts, public interest groups, and electronics manufacturers all oppose these efforts to weaken Betamax. So why is it still happening? 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. And most members of Congress assume this is a non-controversial issue, off the radar of most voters. If they can please their donors without a big fuss, they will. It's bad policy, but until we start making noise, it's smart politics.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Can anyone say tactical retreat?
Check out http://www.ipaction.org/ if you want to fight the power with the weapon of choice in this particular melee. Cold hard cash.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
[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.
Hatch was the guy who wanted to remotely destroy people's computers if they were found to contain items that infringed on copyright. Yes, you read that right. Remotely destroy people's computers.
I'm all for destroying their machines, Hatch said during a Committee hearing Tuesday. "'If you have a few hundred thousand of those, I think people would realize' the seriousness of their actions," the wire service quotes him as saying. (source)
You're close, but this is actually much more sinister. It's a very common tactic that goes like this:
Steps 1 and 2 have now been accomplished. I'm just waiting for step 3 when more of my few remaining rights have been taken away. It will, as you say, though happen after the election.
*sigh*
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Darn I was really hoping that this would pass. It opens up so many more doors for us. I for one think that I should be able to sue GM, Chryslar-Daimler, BMW and the rest for producing cars that go more then 65mph thus inducing me to speed. Those speeding tickets weren't y fault sir I was induced to speed. Let's not forget to sue fast food for inducing us to splurge and fatten ourselves due to their biggy size's. Gone is the age of individual responsibility /cheer. Let's not hold users accountable for their actions no no it is the saftware writers fault damn you naughty naughty geeks.
This type of bill is why we get Redhat linux distro's unable to play mp3's and why SuSE pro 9.1 will not play a DVD right out of the box. This alone and well maybe the DMCA will do more to stifle innovation then any band of world war 2 germans.