The most serious threat to digital liberties in years is now moving ahead in Congress. I mentioned the INDUCE (Inducing Infringement of Copyrights) Act before I left on vacation, and last week Sen. Orrin Hatch (with Sen. Patrick Leahy’s support) formally introduced the Senate bill.
As Declan McCullagh reported in CNET News.com, the act would outlaw P2P networks, ReplayTV, and even the iPod.
Jessica Litman, a professor at Wayne State University who specializes in copyright law, said the language was “worded so broadly” that it would put Web sites such as Tucows, which hosts peer-to-peer clients like the Morpheus software, at risk for “inducing” infringement.
Besides Leahy, other supporters who ought to know better include Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
What can we do? A new site called Savetheipod lets you send an email fax to your senators and represenative. It only takes a few seconds, so go do it.
Other coverage:
• p2pnet.net News: Down Hill Battle, Freeculture.org and Click the Vote have teamed up to help stop senator Orrin Hatch’s INDUCE Act from becoming reality. INDUCE comes in hiding behind pornography – a favourite Hatch ploy – and, “would put a foot on the throat of anyone coming to market with a new device, software product, or home networking system that handles copyrighted content,” states Gary Shapiro, chairman of the Home Recording Rights Coalition.
• The EFF staged a brilliant mock trial featuring Apple, Toshiba and CNET as defendants with the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) as plaintiffs. You can also sign EFF’s email petition against the INDUCE Act.
• Magic City News: Will the INDUCE Act kill the iPod?
• Ernest Miller last week had this thoughtful examination of the INDUCE Act and , with these frightening conclusions about the threat to do-it-yourself culture:
I would imagine that it will be much easier for Hollywood to go after websites that promote fan fiction. Computer game companies that do not like modding can go after websites that teach people how to mod computer games. Websites that encourage or promote Machinima are in deep trouble. Things like remix “construction sets” would probably also be under legal threat, even if they didn’t contain any unauthorized material. Certain editing technologies like the ClearPlay DVD player, which allows parents to skip offensive portions of a DVD, would certainly be more threatened than they are now. See, Liberals, Conservatives Favor Different Kinds of Censorship. Third-party annotations? Well, those are right out.
• And Prof. Susan Crawford offered this well-reasoned call for public hearings.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
Leave a Reply