Legal/Government

INDUCE Act: More bad laws from congress

Senator Orrin Hatch is once again showing his ignorance and creating bad laws. This time he is trying to curtail P2P tools by making the P2P tool providers counselling infringers:

Rumor has it that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) will be introducing a bill tomorrow that would add a new Section 501(g) to the Copyright Act granting copyright owners a cause of action against those who "induce" copyright infringement (cf. patent law). This bill, dubbed the INDUCE Act, would apparently also reach those who "counsel" infringers.

This law would not directly outlaw P2P tools, but it would make those who write P2P tools liable for the actions taken by people who use the software to infringe copyrights. This would in effect get people in the US to stop producing P2P tools, and just let the rest of the world take care of that for us. Once again, a law would stifle innovation in this country and make it more lucrative/safe to do business outside of the US. Say, can we outsource congress to India?

I love it when congressmen ignore court rulings and propose laws that are contradictions of long drawn out court battles. Of course, I should not be surprised -- afterall, Senator Hatch is not representing the people, but representing the media companies. Senators are not supposed to represent their constituents are they?

You know, the demise of the old guard media companies is not coming along fast enough. How can we accelerate the process a bit more?? Despite flagging CD sales and being eaten alive by file traders, they sure do have lots of money to spend on buying congressmen.

Posted by Mayhem at June 18, 2004 12:15 PM