p2pnet.net News:- Mainstream media on and offline media outlets are increasingly disinclined to regurgitate glib, but highly innacurate (to be charitable) Hollywood PR, verbatim.

When word of the INDUCE Act first hit the cyberwaves, it was generally heralded as badly needed legislation to help defeat p2p and online piracy the entertainment industry disingenuously claims is causing terrible hardship to the multi-billion-dollar movie and music industries.

But now, major print and electronic press outlets are starting to wonder if INDUCE is such a good thing after all.

The bill’s, “high-profile supporters include much of the entertainment industry, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton,” says a September 27 Wall Street Journal article Antipiracy Bill Divides Studios and Tech Companies.

However, companies and individuals of all stripes and persuasions are coming out against INDUCE and the WSJ points out that with the entertainment industry’s bitter Morpheus / Grokster defeat as a backdrop, “movie studios, music companies and other copyright holders believe they need stricter laws that would allow them to sue people who they think encourage copyright violation by creating technologies that enable piracy”.

Spearheaded by Hollywood stalwart senator Orrin Hatch, INDUCE is soon to be revisited by congress but companies in a wide range of other industries – consumer electronics, technology and even financial services – “worry that the Induce Act could ensnare them as well,” says the WSJ.

“The companies fear they would face liability if their products – CD and DVD burners, for example – were used by people making illegal copies of entertainment products. Even manufacturers of components for those products fear they could face lawsuits if the proposed law takes effect. Among the companies that have come out against the act are Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc.”

Google and Yahoo? Far more sigificantly, also lined up against Induce is the BSA (Business Software Alliance) funded by such as IBM and Microsoft, not to speak of a coalition which counts BellSouth Corp, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-USA) and the US Internet Industry Association as members.

“The upshot,” says the WSJ, “is another Hollywood versus Silicon Valley standoff of the kind that has dogged the piracy debate for years. While it’s far from clear that the Induce Act or any of the other copyright-related bills will become law this session, the debate sets the framework for future intellectual-property deliberations. And it underscores how six years after the passage of the landmark Digital Millennium Copyright Act – which was supposed to create workable copyright standards for the digital era – advances in digital distribution continue to leapfrog the law.”

A new version of INDUCE with “corporate input from a wide range of groups, including the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents makers of TV sets, DVD players, music systems and game players” seeks to “narrow the scope of the law by drawing a distinction between electronics companies and peer-to-peer firms,” says the story, adding that the American Conservative Union has been running ads in publications such as the Hill and the Weekly Standard, “showing a movie marquee that calls the bill, ‘Chilling!’ The fine print says the legislation would threaten personal property rights and create a bonanza for trial lawyers, concluding, that ‘this is one bill that shouldn’t play anywhere’.”

Stay tuned.

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See:-

against INDUCE – INDUCE storm gathers, p2pnet, September 19, 2004

bitter – Morpheus, Grokster win p2p fight, August 19, 2004

lined up against – INDUCE sparks corporate fears, p2pnet, July 29l, 2004

This entry was posted on Monday, September 27th, 2004 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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