Fight the INDUCE Act. (plus, an update)
Seeking to chill the development of technology with perfectly legal and valid uses simply because it might be misused is like banning cars because someone might drive drunk. It works, but it is pretty fascistic.
Tomorrow, these folks are orchestrating a call-in to encourage Congress not to support the INDUCE Act (now entitled "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004"). This is a poorly thought-out law, with ridiculous consequences for reasonable technological uses, and personally, I like my VCR.
Tip of the Blogging hat to mokiejovis, who re-fueled my concern on this issue yesterday, and who is beating this drum himself--including on our own MSD.
UPDATE 14 September: In response to the entirely reasonable comment of Galactichero to my half-baked post, here the brief primer to my response: my concern, unlike the Save BetaMax posse, is primarily a legal language one. The use of "aiding and abetting" language for what are dual-use technologies (like VCRs and filesharing software) is likely to have a chilling effect--or at minimum, open up an avenue of liability--for people developing perfectly good and useful technologies. To really get a sense of why this has me worked up, you need to read Sen. Hatch's introductory comments for this legislation (or, more easily, the wickedly annotated version by Ernie Miller).
Rather than an erosion of Sony vs. Universal precedent, I worry this is a developing trend (like the case against 321 Studios) that is bad for technology development. It continues our unfortunate trend of trying to develop legislation for every potential problem (Next up, the 2005 Act to Ban Bricks, because bricks may be used for vandalism, or even homicide--or at minimum, bricks should be a controlled substance).
Others are arguing this more forcefully, and well, so I'll leave them to it--it's just that I feel a bad trend is developing.
Tomorrow, these folks are orchestrating a call-in to encourage Congress not to support the INDUCE Act (now entitled "Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004"). This is a poorly thought-out law, with ridiculous consequences for reasonable technological uses, and personally, I like my VCR.
Tip of the Blogging hat to mokiejovis, who re-fueled my concern on this issue yesterday, and who is beating this drum himself--including on our own MSD.
UPDATE 14 September: In response to the entirely reasonable comment of Galactichero to my half-baked post, here the brief primer to my response: my concern, unlike the Save BetaMax posse, is primarily a legal language one. The use of "aiding and abetting" language for what are dual-use technologies (like VCRs and filesharing software) is likely to have a chilling effect--or at minimum, open up an avenue of liability--for people developing perfectly good and useful technologies. To really get a sense of why this has me worked up, you need to read Sen. Hatch's introductory comments for this legislation (or, more easily, the wickedly annotated version by Ernie Miller).
Rather than an erosion of Sony vs. Universal precedent, I worry this is a developing trend (like the case against 321 Studios) that is bad for technology development. It continues our unfortunate trend of trying to develop legislation for every potential problem (Next up, the 2005 Act to Ban Bricks, because bricks may be used for vandalism, or even homicide--or at minimum, bricks should be a controlled substance).
Others are arguing this more forcefully, and well, so I'll leave them to it--it's just that I feel a bad trend is developing.
posted by The Malcontent at 11:43 AM
1 Comments:
WTF?
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