Sanity's Journal: What might a viable Induce Act look like?

More and more people are accepting that it is unlikely that the ill-conceived Induce Act will survive in its present form, however a number of well-informed people have told me that a revamped version which more specifically targets P2P networks probably will make it through Congress.

But, this begs the question: Will it ever be possible to target the makers of Kazaa and Morpheus, without the supposedly unintended consequences that everyone worries about?

Now, obviously the law can't simply name the companies it wants to get rid of, so there has to be some kind of test to identify these "bad actors". The fundamental problem (for the Induce Act) is that there may not exist an objective test that can effectively isolate those they wish to isolate, meaning that the Induce Act will inevitably require a subjective test. Subjective tests must be clarified by litigation, but it only requires the threat of litigation to torpedo many potentially valuable new technologies before they even get out of the angel investor's office.

It is therefore my suspicion that it will be impossible to rewrite the Induce Act such that it addresses the concerns of the IEEE, CEA, EFF, and others, while still achieving its stated goal. This probably means that the current effort to come up with a compromise is unlikely to bear fruit. I doubt the situation is improved by the fact that the person charged with achieving this compromise is the Register of Copyrights, Mary Beth Peters, who has a more anti-technology view than even the RIAA will comfortably admit to.

Whatever happens, I am sure that history will regard the Induce Act as the most violent death throe yet of a powerful and influential industry. Lets hope they don't take too many useful technologies down with them.

Well, no

[ryanr]

This raises the question : will it ever be possible to target the makers of Kazaa and Morpheus, without the supposedly unintended consequences that everyone worries about?

They go out of their way to make sure that they least fit any legislation in place, and also that "unintended consequences" will ensue if threatened. That's the point. Attack Napster's centralized control? Then we'll do away with that (even though it might be nice to have from the service operator's point of view.)

Also, it's no news

Re:Well, no

[Sanity]

Also, it's no news to anyone around here that if they come up with a nice, neat definition that successfully squashes the existing services, then a new one that (maybe barely, questionably) complies with the new laws will spring up. My point exactly, so they will need a subjective definition which would require litigation which would have a chilling effect.

oops - mispost

[Sanity]

Also, it's no news to anyone around here that if they come up with a nice, neat definition that successfully squashes the existing services, then a new one that (maybe barely, questionably) complies with the new laws will spring up.

My point exactly, so they will need a subjective definition which would require litigation which would have a chilling effect.