[Politech] New Senate bill would ban P2P networks [ip]

From: Declan McCullagh (declan@private)
Date: Thu Jun 24 2004 - 10:38:22 PDT


[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.
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