[I've been behind on Politech because I've been busy reworking the site and adding RSS/Atom feeds. More on this later today; meanwhile, here are some items in the queue. --Declan] --- http://www.politechbot.com/2004/06/24/senate-induce-act/ A new Senate bill would effectively outlaw file-swapping networks, but that's not the real news. It's easy to introduce legislation -- and much more difficult to get it enacted. The real news here is that the new Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act already enjoys serious, bipartisan support. Look at the list of its sponsors: Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.; Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. Here's a summary from my News.com article: Their legislation says "whoever intentionally induces any violation" of copyright law would be legally liable for those violations... The IICA is designed to overturn an April 2003 ruling from a federal judge in Los Angeles that said file-swapping services StreamCast Networks and Grokster were legal to operate... Critics were assailing the measure even before it was introduced, saying that in addition to outlawing peer-to-peer networks, it could imperil products like ReplayTV and even the VCR. Here's the text of the bill, Hatch's statement, and Leahy's statement. _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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