EFF's Letter to the Senate on INDUCE

z0ink writes "Picked up off of EFFector today a letter to all US Senators on the topic of IICA (Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 -- formerly the INDUCE Act). 'In February, EFF proposed an industry-led collective licensing solution that would ensure compensation for copyright owners while minimizing the need for governmental intrusion into the digital music marketplace,' writes EFF Executive Director Shari Steele in the letter. 'It's time for a solution to the P2P conflict that pays artists, not lawyers.' IICA has been covered here on Slashdot with more information available here."

Copyright owners != artists

"It's time for a solution to the P2P conflict that pays artists, not lawyers"

Of course most copyrights are owned by publishers, not artists...

Re:Copyright owners != artists

A P2P system designed with a more direct artist > consumer flow in mind could alleviate that problem too.

Then of course it'll be blamed for putting a whole shitload of fat guys in suits out of work, they'll buy some more laws to put a stop to it, etc...etc...etc...

Damn, I have become cynical lately.

Re:Copyright owners != artists

I dont think putting fat guys in suits out of work is a bad thing. And if you do create the more direct flow of cash to the artist then the fat guys wont have the money to buy the laws. Once it starts it may well snowball.

Re:Copyright owners != artists

I'm not expert, but my understanding of the music industry leads me to believe that the "fat guys in suits" do serve a genuine purpose.
They may get paid too much for what they do, but they do stuff.

Artists cannot go national on their own; they somebody to invest in studio time, radio distribution, etc.
From what I've seen, most artists in this day and age just go where they are told and say what they are told by their Handlers.

In short, you don't become big without luck or a very talented promotional team.
I, for one, would prefer the artists get to concentrate on performing and writing.

Re:Copyright owners != artists

Ah, but the main reasons that artists can't go national on their own is that A. they are being artificially repressed by payola (or something resembling it), B. the recording industry's marketing machine is a juggernaut, an 800 lb. gorilla, if you will, and the individual artist is forced to compete with that, and C. most of the major media venues are owned by the same parent companies as major recording companies, so there is no incentive for them to provide alternate mechanisms for non-major-label artists.

Let's break this down one point at a time.

Studio time: I think there are at least three recording studios in people's homes in my neighborhood. Most of them are highly computer-based, costing a tiny fraction of what a major label studio would cost to build, but still providing similar quality. That's not saying that finding a good engineer isn't important, but a good engineer costs a tiny fraction of what it costs to rent a studio, which in turn is a tiny fraction of how much many record company-owned studios screw you for if you are signed with their label....

Radio distribution: this one is easy. It's not like books where the cost of publication is huge and you have to be hyper-selective. You just need a handful of companies that take submissions and distribute them to radio stations. Your band would sign a waiver of liability to protect the company if you ripped off somebody else's music, and then your music would go in a slush pool. There are already a few companies that do this, though they mostly target Muzak-type markets rather than radio stations.

Anyway, with such a mechanism, radio stations who wanted to be indie-friendly could then simply grab a random 24 songs (one an hour) from the slush pool and play them, then report upstream on whether people called in and said "that song rocks" or "that song sucks". The slush pool songs would have someone reading a URL at the end telling where you could find that artist on the distributor's website ("to hear more by this artist, search for 'My Sucky Little Band' at megamusicdb.com". Music that got a good response could be weighted higher than music that got a bad response, and thus would naturally get more airplay. The weighting could be segregated by target audience, by region, by genre, whatever.

Most artists who "just go where they are told and say what they are told by their Handlers" end up making cookie cutter music that appeals to teenagers for three weeks, then dies out. And you're right that those sorts of disposable pop stars could never make it on their own. That doesn't mean that there aren't artists who could.

Re:Copyright owners != artists

That's called treating the symptom, not the problem.

The problem is that entertainers (I refuse to call most of them "artists") are still signing contracts with the RIAA.

Any solution to the "P2P conflict" will have to center around getting entertainers to stop signing with the RIAA. Once that happens, the RIAA has absolutely no power over the entertainer and the means they choose to distribute their music.

Re:Copyright owners != artists

Generally that's the case, but in the US at least, we have what's called a "Work-For-Hire" clause which states that the result of said work belongs to the one doing the hiring, NOT the one doing the creating.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that standard RIAA boilerplate includes such a clause.

Absolutely wrong

Copyrights are always owned by the artists. By law. By definition.

The are the creator of the work, and therefore automatically assigned the copyright, which cannot be given away.

(The RIAA once tried to change this by changing the law to allow "work for hire"-type music contracts, which would make the studios the copyright holders. Thankfully, it didn't pass.)

What you are thinking of is the DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS to specific copyrights. Such distribution rights are typically owned by publishers, by form of a contract with the copyright holder, the artist.

And it is exactly these distribution rights that, with the advent of the Internet and P2P, suddenly don't add nearly as much value to the music as they used to do, yet the products (albums) are still being charged for as much as they were in the old days.

Something's gotta give.

No comment

From the website:

EFF is a nonprofit group of

passionate people -- lawyers, volunteers, and visionaries -- working to protect your digital rights.

Re:No comment

EFF is a nonprofit group of passionate people -- lawyers

I hear some [gardenofpraise.com] lawyers [rebelswithavision.com] are more than just profiteering bastards and actually want to change things...

Lawyers

It's time for a solution to the P2P conflict that pays artists, not lawyers

It's time for a solution to any problem that never involves lawyers.

Lawyers are a kind of leech that is created by the government itself: the law that governs what citizens are or aren't allowed to do (that means all of us) has become so complicated that we, the citizens, have to hire 3rd parties who are versed in its intricacies, to "interface" with the judicial system. This certainly isn't new, and it's the same thing in all countries in the world, but it never fails to infuriate me.

Make the law simpler, and (1) the leeching caste of the lawyers will not be required each and every time you have to talk to a judge, and (2) since people won't necessarily lose money on attorney fees, frivolous lawsuits designed to impoverish the defendants, or threaten to do so like the RIAA's strong-arm technique of wrestling 3 grands out of 13 year old teens, will disappear.

I've tired writing my Senators and Congressman

But it's like talking to a brick wall. They see this as a "protecting against theft" issue, and no amount of oration will change their minds. The concepts of freedom to invent and create without worrying about being liable for any and every violation that might produce is lost on them. The concept of fair use, and reasonable limits to copyright are lost on them.

I give up.

Give 'em a chance

I hate lawyers as much as the next guy, but this is a good thing.

The current online music business model sucks a big fat one. If improvements were made (better availabiliy of new and non-pop artists, choise of file size including lossless, etc.) and the fee were changed to a per-month system, I think enough people would switch over and make it work. I would gladly pay $10 a month for unlimited downloads of lossless material (the EFF says $5, which is derived from the statistic that the average american spends $60 a year on CDs, I would recommend a higher amount, though, because I expect that people would download more music in this system than they would buy in a store).

Re:Give 'em a chance

But it was a stupid letter.

The big music companies can't be forced to block-license their output. They do it for radio stations because it's in their interest to have their songs played in a context where a) large numbers of people can hear them, and b) if their song isn't playing, someone else's would be.

Neither of these applies to individual downloads. The fact you're listening to their song doesn't mean that large numbers of people will hear it. And, if you want to hear a particular song and find it isn't available for online download, it isn't particularly likely that you'll run off and buy another song which IS available for online download. (Unless you're an EFF protestor, but that's too small a group.) And if you say "if it isn't available for legal download I'll pirate it" then they'll call for the handcuffs brigade. It's ridiculous to suggest that the suggestion for addressing the devaluation of a law should be backed by the threat of breaking that law.

Nor do either of these apply to "internet radio stations" where there are far too many for any one to have significant coverage.

Fair letter but ,,,

Its a fair letter but in this world political "support" speaks lounder than words, you know the kind of support that lines pockets.

Whilst there are artists (ahem) who strive to be "superstars" and there are companies (the publishers who end up OWNING the stars and their material) who will push their resources to get them there -AND- there is an audience for these "pop" sensations, then the monetary incentive will be there to support the publishers and their whims. And that is that.

I do wonder sometimes if the politicians passing these draconian laws have EVER copied a tape, made a compilation disc for the car OR HAVE TEENAGE KIDS who would be so inclined?

Support the EFF!

Buy a T-Shirt [eff.org], or become a member [eff.org]. A sensible organization like this deserves your support.

Then nobody has any karma, right?

You're throwing the baby out with the bath water. Because the ACLU supports the rights of KKK members (and anyone else) to demonstrate, do you therefore not support the ACLU? What political party, anywhere, has a platform each of whose individual planks you wholeheartedly support?

It will never happen. The best you can hope for in life is to support organizations whose views MOSTLY correspond to yours. Unless, that is, you want to be all by yourself. What's that old joke? I think it's from MAD magazine, mid 60's -- one Frenchman is a restaurant owner, two Frenchman is a political party (apologies to the French).

Bien soir.

(I think the joke finishes, "three Frenchmen is a love triangle," in case anyone cares).

Maybe I am cynical

But I given up hope that anything good for fair use will come out of washington, The momentum from the clinton era is to strong now. And if Kerry gets in, he is bound to help his contributers back at hollywood, also (as much as I like Bush) Bush will not be any better, I don't think he has the time to look into and understand the issue at hand. Both canadates will not be good for fair use laws (better elect on other [more] important issues] So at this point I not going to worry about fair use anymore, it is dead, I will now give up (acturaly have a while back) and buy the DRM stuff (read iTMS, because atlest they are giving some ok rights to the user, read 5 computers can be autorized)

If this was the 80's

I wonder what the current state of the computing industry would be like if during the 80's a bill similar to this was passed to stop double tape decks being manufactured?

I belive that if this bill goes ahead it could act as a catalyst for other countries to pass similar laws and at the same time hurt the IT sector worldwide.

nice proposal but ...

The problem is that the government will do anything to sustain the music industry. That involves wiping out the competition (P2P), because with P2P people can really choose the music they want to hear and discover alternative artists.
They only care about copyright owners, not artists.

Just Lower the price of music

If the industry would just lower the price d/l ing of a song to something like 10 cents, this would all be moot.

Why wont they work with p2p software and have each d/l cost like .10 cents? (cheaper if you share)
They would make Billions and it would cost them allmost nothing to distribute the music, because the fans would be doing it for them. Sure people would still d/l for free, but most people would pay .10 cents if it was easy to get the un DRM'ed music.

It'll never happen

'It's time for a solution to the P2P conflict that pays artists, not lawyers.'

The problem here is that Congress is full of lawyers bent on doing things that amount to full-employment programs for lawyers and accountants. A program like this one that would have the effect of reducing lawsuits has no chance at all.

We complain loudly about conflict of interest by legislators and regulators, while ignoring the biggest one of all: that lawyers write laws. I believe that being a practicing attorney should bar one from being eligible to serve in Congress in much the same way as being an insurance company executive, as a practical matter if not a legal one, bars one from serving as an insurance regulator.

Why it won't work

I hate to say this, but their are several reasons this won't work. Unless of course YOU write your congress person. [to be honest most people are too lazy]

The EFF idea makes too much sense, and therfore violates about 10 rules of making law

10 rules of making law
a. Any law congress shall enact must be hard to understand and convoluted
b. Any oppurtunity to get your face on TV to tackle a serious problem of your campaign contributer must be taken
c. Do not pass any law that may in any way reduce any lawyers potential to earn money
d. Keep starving artists that way
e. The EFF is just like the ACLU - it's just a collection of letters that your constituants don't know about - but probably won't like
f. If I don't understant it, I must fear it and pass legislation against it
g. This letter contains the phrase " P2P technologies", get RIAA approval on how to think about this
h. This letter contains the phrase "profound threat to innovation", get Microsoft approval after talking to the RIAA
i. Anything that congress can meddle in the better
j. If it's simple, makes sense, and doesn't require congressional involvement it must be wrong.

Also remember that this is an election year. The eff proposal removes a potential income source from lawyers, the single strongest lobby in Congress. This will go nowhere until people take the time to write their congresspersons. May I humbly suggest that my fellow /.ers start writing.

cluge
AngryPeopleRule

Comparing the INDUCE act to...

If gun control were pursued the way the INDUCE act goes after copyright violation:

Fishing sinkers would be illegal because they *might* be melted down and recast into bullets.

I will buy music again when..

I can -buy- a lifetime irrevocable licence to -it-.

Not a plastic scratchy waste product. Not a shitty format digistream for my iPod.

A -full- perpetual, amd fully paid up licence please. And THEN, ill pay.

Ill burn my own dern copies. Ill mediashift too my own dern iPod. I just want a -licence-, and a one-time access to a 100% lossless audio format. And the burden of knowing Im a licensee, should be given to the RIAA. I fully expect THEM to proove Im a licensee, and as such can copy YOUR cd if mine gets lost.

"This music was made for you and me"

"/Dread"

It's too vague...

`(g)(1) In this subsection, the term `intentionally induces' means intentionally aids, abets, induces, or procures, and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement based upon all relevant information about such acts then reasonably available to the actor, including whether the activity relies on infringement for its commercial viability. `(2) Whoever intentionally induces any violation identified in subsection (a) shall be liable as an infringer. `(3) Nothing in this subsection shall enlarge or diminish the doctrines of vicarious and contributory liability for copyright infringement or require any court to unjustly withhold or impose any secondary liability for copyright infringement.'.

The first paragraph isn't unreasonable and even includes the "reasonable person" test. Anything can happen in a process involving lawyers, judges and law enforcement but the "reasonable person" test has a long history of staving off overzealous lawyers and enforcement knee-jerks.

The problem is with the third paragraph. Making a copy of your legally purchased mechandise is still against the law. According to paragraph 3, even if you make a copy of an audio disc for your purposes; Should that copy ever be found in a condition by which it isn't under your immediate control (not on your person, on an internet connected PC, in your car) you are liable under the provisions of this law.

That $5 a month fee

It's not practical. It means that we assume that peopel are always going to spenda fixed amount on music in any given time. Not only that, but it means that those who can't afford it, rather than getting fewer songs, as is the case at the moment, will be entitled to none at all.

Some of us like to be able to choose the amount we spend.

Wrong audience

'It's time for a solution to the P2P conflict that pays artists, not lawyers.'

How many of the senators are lawyers ? How many musicians ?

But Laywers..

Make the business world go around.. ( so its a slow downward spiral, but it is still 'round' ).

On a serious note, normally when we are discussing 'media copyrights', the holders are rarely the artists...

What do artists have to say?

Ever sinve P2P came out, and music labels started they fight against it, I saw almost nowhere artists tell us what they think.

In one way, engineers/hackers/nerds thinking what is best for them is not better than labels/lawyers doing the same.

A new distribution solution should involve all actors: artists, customers, distributors (whatever those become after the change).

Senator writing result...

I wrote to Dole & Edwards (the two NC senators) when Slashdot had the first INDUCE article.

While I've yet to hear back form Edwards's office (not suprising considering his current campaign), I did hear back from Dole's.

I was expecting the standard "but this is good for technology, live with it..." response, but instead got a short response that essentially said that she agreed that INDUCE might have some potential bad consequences for technology and innovation and that she'd investigate it.

Now, obviously it was just a form letter response, but it's perhaps the first time I've had a senator actually respond with potentially encouraging news.

Or artists could start relying on gigs for income

The idea that without the record industry the artists will starve is nuts. The record industry comes very recent in human industry.

Bands and musicians might care to start performing live as a job of work rather than as an act of cherry picking and earn a buck.

There's no reason why musicians can't earn a living like brick layers, plumber, programmers etc all do. The need for the record industry is predicated upon a desire to turn a small proportion of people into multimillionaires.

Pandora HAS openned the box and there's no going back. All this concern about trying to wrestling the P2P networks is just tilting at windmills.

This law SHOULD pass

This is not a trolling attempt but this law SHOULD pass. This is a law that affects Joe Sixpack. The DMCA, that was a law that mainly affect the IT sector, but this law affects anyone who owns a computer, an iPod or anything else that could possibly be used for copyright infringement. People will finally see what crooks those elected leaders are, sure there is no such things as an honest politician and Joe Sixpack knows this, but he just may not know how their representatives are huge sellouts to corporations. Once all these Joe Sixpacks see what the hell is going on, something will be done. So let this law pass, it's the only way change will happen.

EFF is ineffective

Why on earth would these assholes propose a new fee instead of pointing out that the act would make every single recording device in the U.S. illegal? It makes me wonder how much money the recording industry gives to the EFF.

The act is wrong, and should be opposed on that basis. Anything else is just giving up, and the fee scheme is nothing but theft of money from those of us that do not copy other peoples property.

The problem with P2P..

P2P gives people too much of a choice when choosing their music.

The RIAA and Clear Channel have a monopoly over the listening audience in the states.

Pay per download can still control what a user can or cannot listen to by only making certain records and songs available. It's not just losing money that record companies are afraid of, it's losing control over the distribution of music.

Sure the radio is free (for now) but the listeners do not control what is played over the air.

Music, Like Information, Wants to be Free

I think it's time to re-examine the whole concept of copyright and intellectual property. Unless it can be proven that a person or business is profiting from copyright infringement, and that those profits are having a direct negative impact on the IP owner's ability to gain from their work, then I don't see why we should not let people share information (including music), and encourage businesses and aritists to find other ways to make a living from art, ie: performances, merchandise, etc..

Effect changes in the networks

As far as I can tell people will always be file sharing, so why don't we come up with a responsible network that gives some incentive to the sharers to be responsible. Why is P2P so good? Simply put, high availability. Beyond that low cost to the owners of the material since they don't have to own a lot of servers and whatnot. So we need a network that can track sharers trades and charge them a nominal fee (read much less than current costs). I haven't seen much in the way of this but I did google across a relatively young and in the works network called bitmunk [bitmunk.com]. It's still in beta and whatnot, but they seem pretty serious about all this, I even talked to to a programmer there and bothered him for some technical questions and he seemed pretty receptive to my comments.

They seem to have the right idea, no DRM but they do have watermarks so they can track you down and cancel your account if you start sharing elsewhere. Maybe this doesnt' solve sharing among friends but, that's probably not a solvable problem, iTunes doesn't even solve this.

Of course all this means we have to return the copyrights to the artists or someone more responsible to the RIAA.

My 2 cents: check out the network give them ideas, they seem pretty bright and eager to please.

Patrik

Bad word choice. Use "Mandatory" not "Collective"

The EFF letter makes a serious policitical oopsie by using the term "collective license".

The word "collective" is an instant turnoff for Republicans (as well as Libertarians), and that's over half of congress at the moment. Say "collective" and from your own mouth you have labeled yourself as a socialist crypto-commie trying to steal everything that isn't nailed down, keep most of it for yourselves and your cronies, and use the rest to buy votes from illegal immigrtants and welfare cheats.

It's also not the correct term-of-law, which is "mandatory license".

Making something "mandatory" goes over well with most Republicans who got as far as congress, all Democrats, and the whole left-wing wacko squad. (The Libertarians will scream - but how much power do THEY have? B-) )

I wonder if a case could be made

for something like copying Excel Saga DVDs. The FBI Warning is replaced with the following text.

ILPALAZZO IS WATCHING YOU!

The scapegoat of the Induce Act.

AgVulpine writes "Take a visit to Amazon.com [amazon.com] and search for Doom3. Mixed in with the search results you'll find an interesting sponsored link. "Doom 3 on BitTorrent -- Download Doom 3 using BitTorrent at Suprnova (aff) -- www.suprnova.com" . It's this kind of crap that will give the US Senate Committee the leverage they need to push through the Induce Act (or ICAA [loc.gov]), a bill aimed at shutting down all P2P networks. IICA has been [slashdot.org] covered [slashdot.org] here [slashdot.org] on Slashdot with more information available here [corante.com]."

Re:Ahh, "Flamebait" to any dissenting opinions

he's bring up the "stealing vs. infingement". that is flamebait. it is a fact that unauthorised copying of copyrighted works without the owner's permission is "copyright infringement" and not "theft". this is true and anyone denying it is ignorant or trolling.

Re:Yeah right, 5 bucks

(yes, I said steal, let go of your state of denial, nerd)

And how, exactly, is the "Sony Bono copyright extension act" *not* stealing. See, copyright is a deal (see the constitution) where the people (the folks who purportedly authorize government intrusion, BTW) allow artists to maintain a monopoly on their works for a certain period of time. At the end of that time, that work becomes public domain. That is, it belongs to everyone. The artist is compensated.

So, for example, Walt Disney creates Mickey Mouse and produces some cartoons. He is provided a monopoly to make money from that work, and in return it will belong to everyone in 2001. Well, Walt was WELL compensated for producing it, and now he's dead, and Mickey should be ours.

Instead, Eisner buys a few congressmen, and they steal Mickey from us! Mickey Mouse is a cultural icon. He's part of the American consciousness.

Lots of other stuff was stolen from us, too. A lot of it are things that the corporations can't make money on, but they're like "hey, we can't just give away our assets", so it will sit in a vault and the tape or film or whatever it's on will deteriorate until it's gone forever.

This is actually closer to the real definition of stealing, because we are deprived forever of the item, not just an opportunity to make money from it, not just an exclusive right to make copies.

So we complain, we try to point out to them why they are wrong, but they just ignore us. So, we just ignore them, too. We just turn our backs on the bastards that have stolen our culture and our heritage and are trying to take everything else away from us, too. We turn our backs and just say "Fuck you. We're going to do our own thing". We're going to take our country back, one way or another. So you just keep taking money from the traitors that are exploiting us, and sending our jobs over seas, and leading us down the road to a litigation-based economy (how sustainable is that?). You take their money, and pass the laws they want, and we will ignore you more and more. Until your laws don't matter to anyone anymore, and you become irrelevant.

Re:Yeah right, 5 bucks

It's not denial, it's a legal fact. Copyrightable works are not property in any way, so they can't truly be stolen unless they're prevented from falling into the public domain.

The entertainment industry's main business model is becoming unviable, so why should they be granted special protection? The large number of people who willingly commit copyright infringement (it really isn't stealing, get over it) means that the law needs to be changed in their favor because ordinary people no longer view it as a crime.

Re:Yeah right, 5 bucks

A lot of p2p traffic is simple sharing, but more of it is copywrite infringement. Call it stealing long enough and you may eventually convince us that it's really a problem. Or, call it stealing long enough and you may eventually convince us that some stealing isn't so bad.