Journal Sanity's Journal: What might a viable Induce Act look like? 3
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 (Score:2)
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 (Score:2)
oops - mispost (Score:2)