Posted on 07/06/2004 3:26:01 PM PDT by take
Hatch's Induce Act comes under fire
US Congressman Rick Boucher took up arms against the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act bill, being brought before Congress right now, in a website interview at Inside Digital Media this week.
In answer to questions put by IDM's Phil Leigh, Boucher made it clear that he would fight tooth and claw to prevent the new bill from making it into law in its current form. Boucher himself is supporting and presenting a bill that calls for changes to be made to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which he feels is misguided in by making the bypassing of copy protection illegal in its own right.
Some quotes here taken from the interview give some comfort. "I will work against this act. It is very poorly defined and it could target just about anyone. Even a university giving its students broadband access, could, under the current wording, be construed as inducing a copyright breach.
"Anyone making ANY kind of recording device, even an innocent recorder that has many other fair uses, could be in breach of this law just for making that technology available. Frankly there is no need for the statute at all."
The bill has been introduced by Senator Orrin Hatch, and has the backing of the leaders of both sides of the house according to Boucher, including Bill Frist, the US senator for Tennessee, the majority leader.
"Neither of the leaders are on a judiciary committee or the commerce committee and although I'm not suggesting that their support is inappropriate, this bill will have to go through the Judiciary committee and I sit on that. I will certainly be collecting examples of potential cases that can be brought under this bill and weeding out potential misuses," promised Boucher.
Boucher is not the only voice to suggest that the Apple iPod might be a target for this bill, instead of the file sharing peer to peer networks that it was supposed to see off. The original advertising campaign of the iPod was "Rip, burn, listen" and it could be attacked as copyright inducing.
MP3 players and DVD recorders could come in for the same treatment say some, including legal brains that support the Personal Freedom Coalition.
Boucher points out that the bill is designed to overturn a decision in the Californian court that said that Grokster was not responsible for contributory infringement because its technology has substantial other, non-infringing uses other than just breaching copyright. If the bill becomes law it would threaten the Supreme Court decision from 20 years ago that Sony, when it introduced the betamax video player, was in the same way, non-infringing, as the court saw that time shifting was not an infringement of copyright.
"The Sony decision has stood the test of time," said Boucher and called on US citizens to write their condemnation of the bill to their member of congress.
Copyright infringement is already illegal. Banning devices because they could potentially be used for copyright violation is the same illogic used by gun-grabbers.
Orrin 'the whore' Hatch is behind so many of these initiatives. Wonder what it cost to purchase him?
The day is coming when we will be unable to own media owned by major catalogs. It will all be play by rent (like Internet access). Stop paying and you see and hear nothing.
There won't be any recordable devices either, except those hardwired to prevent your hooking them up to media playing devices (they'll have ID tags to link recordings to you personally to better run herd on lawbreakers) . I wish this wasn't coming, but it's in the best interests of the entertainment industry, so it will.
I wonder if it's personal vanity. From what I understand, he's a musician--abeit not a very successful one. He wants to make a name for himself in the music world, and since his musical efforts haven't succeeded, he's trying to earn fame legislatively. I would not be surprised if record companies are feeding him such a notion.
The irony, of course, is that while the garbage Hatch advocates may be good for record companies, it will be very bad for musicians. One of the record companies' biggest fears is that it will become too easy for people to produce and sell recorded music without having to sell their souls to them. If they can get Hatch to pass their full legislative agenda, independent recording artists would have to sell their soul to the RIAA before they could get permission to possess their own equipment.
Further, if I understand things correctly, matters get even worse. Perhaps someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the essential aspects of DRM initiatives like Palladium is that digital movies and recordings would contain embedded code which could be executed by a processor but not examined or reverse engineered. The encryption would be via something akin to a public-key cryptosystem, such that licensees could encrypt code to be execute-only, but nobody could decrypt it.
If my understanding of Palladium is seriously wrong, maybe someone can straighten me out. If not, it seems like it would be a new Virus Heaven. Make it so anyone accessing any sort of media content will have no choice but to execute code they can't check, and the floodgates will open.
Of course, the same will be true of personal computers. At least today one can buy Linux and--if so inclined--inspect the code, compile it, check the assemlbly code against the source, assemble that, and check the executable image against the assembly code. But if Hatch has his way, owning a computer without built-in spyware-installing abilities will be illegal.
It is amazing what a few pictures can buy.
A few names of underaged "friends" in the DC area.
Orin is in need of replacement.
The same goes for the whole lot of them.
They should be term limited out after one six year term.
Reps might be able to have two terms. tops.
As long as the incumbency has such power to perpetutate itself, the primadonna senatorial poofters, will continue to wear their skirts and sell their favors. Once term limited out, they LOSE their ability to exchange favors for reelection cash and kickbacks.
disgusting slimies.
Remember that advert. I couldn't help but think Rip or Steal, what's the difference.
That's been their dirty little game all along. RIAA wants to make it a literal crime to have technology that isn't either crippled or in thrall to them. Programmers and independent producers could become outlaws just for being what and who they are. The US hardware/software industry would dry up and blow away. Other parts of the world may not go along with this at all and leave the US in the dust, a stagnant backwater under the soviet-like control of the media moguls.
OTOH, a significant portion of the buying public would rebel, remembering the boundless freedom and power they used to enjoy, and the black market would be huge.
If democrats win majorities, reconsideration of the over reaching of the DMA will never happen.
The story has popped up again - Making more waves at Slashdot (story from yesterday's CNet)
To quote just a small segment "Marybeth Peters, of the US Copyright Office testified recently before the Senate Judiciary committee in support of the INDUCE Act, which has been discussed here before. In summary, she thinks its not strong enough. Among other things, she proposed scrapping the Betamax decision, which makes it legal to timeshift TV shows with a VCR. Analysis here."
I would love to hear those defending Hatch, INDUCE, etc., explain why we should goto jail for using a VCR.
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