Senate Takes Aim At P2P Providers 869
thejoelpatrol writes "The Senate Judiciary Committee, led by everybody's favorite senator, Orrin Hatch, is moving to outlaw P2P entirely by making it illegal to produce such applications. Hatch says such firms 'think that they can legally profit by inducing children to steal. Some think they can legally lure children into breaking the law with false promises of "free music."' So, when was the last time that Kazaa told kids to steal music? Shouldn't the parents be the ones looking out for their kids? The RIAA is (surprise!) in favor of this, while P2P groups are (surprise!) opposed."
Profit? Uh...no. (Score:5, Informative)
"Hatch says such firms 'think that they can legally profit by inducing children to steal."
Thankfully I only use P2P programs that are GPL, and thus free as in beer, so little if any profit motivation there.
The best p2p applications are usually free / open source like eMule [emule-project.net], Freenet [sourceforge.net], and how apparently even Shareza [shareaza.com] 2.0 is open sourced [shareaza.com] under the GPL.
We control the horizontal We control the vertical. (Score:5, Informative)
So UNLESS a P2P app blocks all not-authorised (by the *IAA) file transfers, it will be considered illegal. The implications are amazing, and could easily be applied to hardware (any file copy, burn to CDR, upload to MP3 player, etc...)
Re:The Bill Itself (Score:5, Informative)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S
effects (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Bill Itself (Score:2, Informative)
By Mr. HATCH (for himself, Mr. LEAHY, Mr. FRIST, Mr. DASCHLE, Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina, and Mrs. BOXER):
S. 2560. A bill to amend chapter 5 of title 17, United States Code, relating to inducement of copyright infringement, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I rise with my esteemed colleague and friend, Senator LEAHY, ranking Democrat Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to introduce the ``Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004.'' This Act will confirm that creative artists can sue corporations that profit by encouraging children, teenagers and others to commit illegal or criminal acts of copyright infringement. Senator LEAHY and I are pleased that Majority Leader FRIST and Minority Leader DASCHLE and Senators GRAHAM and BOXER are co-sponsoring this important bipartisan legislation.
It is illegal and immoral to induce or encourage children to commit crimes. Artists realize that adults who corrupt or exploit the innocence of children are the worst type of villains. In ``Oliver Twist'', Fagin and Bill Sikes profited by inducing children to steal. In the film ``Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang'', the leering ``Child-Catcher'' lured children into danger with false promises of ``free lollipops.'' Tragically, some corporations now seem to think that they can legally profit by inducing children to steal--that they can legally lure children and others with false promises of ``free music.''
Such beliefs seem common among distributors of so-called peer-to-peer filesharing (``P2P'') software. These programs are used mostly by children and college students--about half of their users are children. Users of these programs routinely violate criminal laws relating to copyright infringement and pornography distribution. Criminal law defines ``inducement'' as ``that which leads or tempts to the commission of crime.'' Some P2P software appears to be the definition of criminal inducement captured in computer code.
Distributors of some P2P software admit this. The distributors of EarthStation 5 state, ``While other peer 2 peer networks like Kazaa or Imesh continue to deny building their programs for illegal file sharing, at ES5 we not only admit why we built ES5, we actually promote P2P, endorse file sharing, and join our users in swapping files!''
Recently, in the Grokster case, a Federal court drew similar conclusions about the intent of other distributors of P2P software. It warned that some P2P distributors ``may have intentionally structured their businesses to avoid secondary liability for copyright infringement, while benefiting financially from the illicit draw of their wares.'' In other words, many P2P distributors may think that they can lawfully profit by inducing children to break the law and commit crimes.
They are dead wrong. America punishes as criminals those who induce others to commit any criminal act, including copyright infringement. The first sentence of our Criminal Code states:
Whoever commits an offense against the United States or aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces, or procures its commission, is punishable as a principal
Indeed, it is absurd to think that our law might be otherwise. No civilized country could let sophisticated adults profit by tempting its most vulnerable citizens--its children--to break the law.
I think we must understand how some corporations came to confuse child endangerment with a legal business model. Their confusion seems to arise from court cases misinterpreting a well-intended Supreme Court decision that tried to clarify two critical components of federal law: the law of secondary liability and the law of copyright.
The Supreme Court states that secondary liability is ``imposed in virtually all areas of the la
The obvious counter-statement (Score:5, Informative)
While it is not at all clear that Kazaa has ever told people to use it's software to steal, it is clear that some corporations now seem to think that they can legally profit by bribing senators with campaign donations.
Open Secrets [opensecrets.org]
Note that he recieves a generous bonus from "lobbyists" and "TV/Movie/Music".
Don't Forget the Co-Sponsors: (Score:5, Informative)
Mr. FRIST - R TN
Mr. DASCHLE - D SD
Mr. GRAHAM R- SC
Mrs. BOXER -D CA
Bi-partisanship at its best!
"The Corporation" (Score:5, Informative)
This film begins by conducting a psychological prognosis of a corporation, where they find it's condition is of a psychopath [reference.com].
It was shown on the Canadian equivalent [tvo.org] of PBS.
So here's oddly enough a bittorrent download of the 3 part series.
http://66.90.75.92/suprnova//torrents/1983/The Corporation(3).torrent [66.90.75.92]
If anyone is asking for more proof, I think this film will provide it for them. Otherwise, I still found watching this film to be very informative.
Not just P2P! (Score:2, Informative)
Makers of a VCR, camcorder, music player, CD/DVD burner, taper recorder, etc. would be liable for infringement by their customers. Companies will not risk this liability.
They wanted to get rid of fair use and freedom of content out right but everybody yelled. Now they are attacking it indirectly. They successfully outlawed reverse engineering of encryption (See DMCA). Now they want to make it too risky to develop content management and creation products. Fair use and content freedom are fine with them if you have no tools to exercise them!
Read the Electronic Frontier Foundation article. Their lawyers wrote up a fictional lawsuit where Apple, Toshiba and CNET News are sued under this law for aiding copyright infringement via the iPOD and a written review of it.
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&i
Write your Senator now! Call your Senator now! This must be stopped!
Tell Sen. Orrin Hatch your opinion (Score:2, Informative)
Everyone should write to Sen. Hatch [senate.gov]
Once again, I have to plug Rick Boucher (Rep. VA) (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.house.gov/boucher/internet.htm
On this one page, Boucher argues for the protection of Fair Use, for his "Digital Milennium Consumers' Rights Act," against using the DOJ to attack P2P, for...
Oh, hell. Just go read *everything* he's doing. Boucher is the anti-Hatch, and I hate the fact that I'm moving to NC and won't be able to vote for him any more. He is, I think, the one lone voice in the government that actually understands the slightest bit of what he's legislating about.
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Informative)
ISP firewalling and port blocking still chills, of course, but I don't think the sky is black yet.
Re:Inducing Children to Steal. (Score:2, Informative)
About 2 weeks ago, the French Industry minister caused quite a ruckus by officially blaming declining music sales on poor quality, lack of diversity and outrageous prices, exhonarating p2p.
Moreoever, he urged the record industry to move away from the CD and give legal music download sites their chance, instead of clinging to obsolete technology and business models. Quite a U-turn for our government, as it used to go the usual canned lawsuit route until recently.
I am astounded that the news never made it out of France: wasn'it the first time a G7 government told the record industry to quit whining and adapt? Or was it because the US goverment was too busy surrendering to the RIAA?
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
My letter to Hatch (Score:5, Informative)
http://hatch.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction
Dear Senator Hatch,
This is the third letter I have sent you over the last three years. I am a Ph.D. student at Brigham Young University and I have lived in Utah County for almost ten years. For my education, and my employment, I have worked in cutting-edge technology and multimedia. I have authored DVDs for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, as well as several other commercial DVDs. I have also traveled to Europe and Africa to collect audio and video materials for use in online language instruction, so I understand the time, effort, and money that is required to produce high quality content.
However, your current assailing of fair-use rights has once again reached the point of being absurd. Your bill outlined in this article:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s
seems to follow the attitude of legislating broadly, intending to enforce narrowly. Senator Hatch, we have seen "from sad experience" that this does not work.
When I wrote you before, concerning Dmitry Sklyarov, you responded that the DMCA, as currently instituted, struck the proper balance between content provided rights and the rights of consumers. My question is this: What has changed in the last two years that the DMCA suddenly does not go far enough in impeding citizens' rights.
You might believe that peer-to-peer technologies have no legitimate purpose. I know this is wrong. I have used P2P applications to quickly move huge amounts of data across heterogeneous networks, saving me hours. I also attended a subcommittee hearing you held at Brigham Young University where four local firms, including Novell, demonstrated how they were using P2P applications.
I sincerely hope that you will reconsider the present INDUCE legislation, and realize that the scales are already tipped in favor of copy-right holders.
Regards,
Jeremy Browne
Re:I'm confused (Score:2, Informative)
The second amendment protects the right to bear arms - mainly firearms. The second amendment does not protect your right to own/produce sarin or other chemical weapons, anthrax or other biological weapons, thermonuclear weapons, or other various explosive devices such as live rocket launchers, phosherous grenades, and flame throwers.
Re:Madness (Score:4, Informative)
The failed business model in question is the record companies' stranglehold on the music industry.
Few people seem to realize the hypocrisy of their sudden rush to "protect the rights of artists." (When did an "artist" become someone who makes music, not someone who paints? When did "musician" become a dirty word?) The biggest threat to those rights is, and always has been, the record companies themselves.
"The artist formerly known as Prince" didn't change his name to a weird symbol on a whim; he did it because before he was famous, a record company had gotten him to sign a contract so one-sided that they even owned his real-life name. (yes, it's Prince ... talk about child abuse) Going back a few years, the singers and songwriters of some of the real classics of modern music, especially (though far from exclusively) those who were not white males, were paid a pittance for their work that record companies made a fortune from. In court, the record companies have insisted time and again that $100 was more than fair compensation for all rights to a song that they made tens of millions of dollars off of.
Even today, most musicians see only a tiny fraction, if any, of the money from the sales of their CDs. They earn their money primarily from concerts. The money from that overpriced CD -- the one that sells for twice what a DVD of a movie that cost a hundred million dollars to film -- goes straight to the record company, and stays there.
The record companies have a lock on the distribution of music. Anyone can rent a studio and make a CD ... even me (William Hung move over!) ... but if they want to get it in the record stores and on the radio, they have to sell their soul to a record company.
That's why P2P scares the living shit out of the record companies. They know what the real numbers are, not the doctored ones [theinquirer.net] they show Congress. They know that their serfs are deserting them for independant labels and self-distribution. They know that the massive consolidation of radio station ownership [azoz.com] since Orrin Hatch and his buddies threw out rules that had preserved competition for decades and handed the market over to their supporter [surfingtheapocalypse.net] and propaganda wing [interventionmag.com] Clear Channel is costing them a fortune in payola. And I'm sure they know that they're turning out endless streams of overpriced music that, fundamentally, sucks.
But they can't do anything about that. (except maybe the sucky music) They know they're dinosaurs. The know the industry has changed, and their chosen business model -- total control of production, distribution, and sales of music -- is going the way of a business model based on total control of buggy whips. So they're getting people like Orrin Hatch to pass laws to force the market to continue to support that model.
It isn't fans sharing music by the record companies' serfs that the companies fear ... they know, their public statements to the contrary, it isn't hurting their sales, and quite possibly either increasing them or offsetting what would be a greater decline. What leaves them terrified is the existance of a distribution channel that they don't and can't control which will free musicians from being serfs of the record companies in the first place. They fear a system that will allow musicans to keep on doing what they already do -- making their money off of concerts and other sources of revenue -- and not have to sign their lives and their rights over to any record company. They know a system which connects the producer and the consumer directly will have no place for parasites that have gotten fat from feeding off both ends of the line.
This is the sa
I'll Juris Your Dictions (Score:2, Informative)
If you don't vote Libertarian, you ASKED FOR THIS (Score:5, Informative)
Neither face of the party of state power wants you to have any control over your own lives. One side puts a nice shine on further controlling your private life, the other face shines the increasing control of your business life. Both vote for each others programs knowing that quid pro quo, one hand washes the other. Or face licks.
D's and R's both want whatever they can get from you. They will push and only back off to keep the general population from riding in armed revolt. Remember that the "assault weapon ban" passed a REPUBLICAN congress, who were trying to make sure they could push even harder.
Bob-
Re:THE BOTTOM LINE (Score:5, Informative)
see here [wikipedia.org]
-lk
Programs don't break the law... (Score:2, Informative)
EFF Action Alert: Stop Orrin Hatch now! (Score:1, Informative)
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp
You can help by participating and forwarding this link to anyone you know.
Re:Or even better... (Score:5, Informative)
That is almost always a lie. In Missouri, gambling was supposed to help fund education. We all want more money for education, right? Think of the children! What happened was that the education budget was, say $1B. Gambling raised, say, $500M for the schools. $1B + $500M = $1.5B of highly-funded learning, right? Wrong! The school budgets didn't increase at all. The money coming in from gambling replaced taxpayer funds - it wasn't added to them.
So Missouri taxpayers got a lower tax bill that year, right? Wrong! The first rule of governmental spending is that it almost never goes down. The state found some other project that coincidentally needed $500M (probably For The Children). The gambling proponents sort of told the truth: the money did go toward education. What they left out is that an equal amount of money from other sources came out of that budget item.
Good luck in PA. I hope it works out better than it has for any other non-gambling-centric state (ie, excluding NV) that I've ever heard of.
Write your Sentor (Score:1, Informative)
The form can be found at http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&ite
Or you could use a sample letter produced by the Consumers Union, publishers of Consumer Reports, urging Congress debate the issue. A copy can be found at http://www.consumersunion.org/pub/0628%20InduceCo
And finally a petition by Mac fans has also produced a sample letter, available at http://www.savetheipod.com/index1.php [savetheipod.com]
So instead just predicting a public outcry/backlash, help create the public outcry and backlash.
Make your opinion and voice heard, damn it!
Re:His own words a little while back (Score:3, Informative)
http://judiciary.senate.gov/print_member_statemen
Re:Or even better... (Score:4, Informative)
The keys to understanding the problems with public education are 1) understanding assessment (What are you trying to measure? What tools do you have to measure it? What do the tools really measure?), and 2) understanding where the money is going.
The per-student cost of public education went up significantly a couple decades ago due to a single cause. When you find out what that cause is you'll understand why Republicans don't like to talk about it when they're bashing public education.
No society in history has become literate through private education. Private education is a failure.
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:5, Informative)
1. Last year, Hatch proposed creating black-ice like software that would destroy the hardware of people who download music illegally.
2. One of Hatch's staffers illegally cracked several Democrats' computers in the Senate.
3. Hatch's staff illegally used software for hosting a website at the same time Hatch was proposing destroying the PCs of those who would do similar.
4. Hatch is routinely involved in passing laws to reinforce copywrite protections, even if there might not be any grounds for the lawsuit.
5. Hatch's boy is a lawyer, one of who's clients in the SCO.
6. Hatch is constantly trying to amend the Constitution. For example, he keeps introducing an amendment to ban flag burning over and over and is now talking about amending the Constitution so Schwarzenegger can run for President. But he opposed the ERA.
I don't get it. (Score:2, Informative)
induce != produce! (Score:5, Informative)
No doubt he would like that result, which failed in previous attempts to legislate regulation out of existence, such as the several forms of technology regulation previously advocated by Hollings. But that was not to be.
In any case, S. 2560 does not address production of P2P applications, but rather, the inducement of infringement by a third party. Some background is in order to understand the difference.
DIRECT INFRINGEMENT. Really, the question is when should a person be liable for infringement? One easy answer: when she infringes! Did Sarah infringe a copyright when she reproduced, distributed or made copies of a copyrighted work without consent or any other defense? If so, Sarah needs a lawyer. O/W, she isn't an infringer.
INDIRECT INFRINGEMENT. But then, couldn't Sarah avoid infringement altogether by instructing her employee, Julia, to make the copies for her? Nope! Even though Sarah herself committed no infringing acts (reproducing, distribution or derivation), Sarah engaged in conduct that gives rise to a kind of liability, the genus of which is variously called, indirect, secondary or derivative infringement. There cannot be any kind of secondary liability unless and until some third party actually infringes. Then, the question is when is Sarah liable for Julia's infringement, even though Sarah did not herself commit a prohibited act?
INDIRECT: VICARIOUS INFRINGEMENT. The particular species of secondary liability in the Sarah/Julia example is called "vicarious liability," and it derives from the fact that she controlled (in her capacity as employer) the conduct of Julia, directed the infringement and then enjoyed a financial benefit from that control. It is a well-settled idea in copyright law, and offers nothing new to this discussion, except to understand some of what follows.
INDIRECT: CONTRIBUTORY INFRINGEMENT. Now, what if Sarah didn't ask an employee about this, but new that Sleazy Sammy will take just about any work left in plain sight to infringe? Now, Sarah, knowing SS is going to do the deed, advertently places the copy in a location to facilitate the infringement. This now is the classic example of contributing to the infringement of another. (The classical example is leaving a print of a movie in a place for someone to pirate from.)
So, there you go. Acts of direct infringement by Sarah, she loses. If some third party, either Julia or SS infringe, Sarah might still be liable if she is vicariously responsible or if she contributed to the infringement. Proof of secondary liability is usually trickier, and requires proofs of scienter and financial benefit from the conduct, but varies somewhat, depending on the circuit.
NOW, the copying machine cases. Assume Sarah doesn't even HAVE a copy of the Paul, the plaintiff's, work. However, Sarah makes this really neat new movable type printing press, that can be used to reproduce and facilitate distribution of Paul's stuff. The question is whether Sarah can be liable for Carla Customer's use of the printing press to infringe Paul's work. (Once again, we assume that Carla DID THE DEED, and has no defenses. If she didn't infringe or has no defenses, then Sarah is always off the hook.)
This was a hot issue for awhile, that seemed to be raised by someone literally every time a new duplication or distribution technology is produced, from the player piano, to the radio, to the audio tape machine, to the television, to the video tape machine, to the DAT machines until today, with P2P filesharing technology. Allegations are old news. But what of the law? The problems are that the cost of suing a mass market of customers is often great, but liability creates a risk of deterring the development of useful and important technologies.
Well, the principal case here was the Sony Betamax case, in which the movie studios sued Sony for manufacturing a video-tape recor
Protection from ourselves (Score:4, Informative)
I know this isn't 100% ontopic, but it's kinda related, and kinda interesting. The other day, for the first time in ages, I bought a DVD. I got home, popped it in my multireigion DivX capable DVD player, and turned it on. What's the first thing I'm greeted with? The movie?
Nope.
A minute long, unskippable demonisation of pirates, telling me how people who pirate movies are out to kill and rape my children (funny.. don't remember having any), and fund terrorism - um, how, exactly? since when do you pay for Bittorrent downloads. And of course, that pirate movies are inevitably terrible quality and will ruin your enjoyment. Funny. I've never been forced to sit through FACT preaching at me on a pirate DVD, and I tend to find that release groups take so much pride in their rips and distribution that the quality is uniformly excellent - indeed, with anime fansubs the fan-released movies often have better subtitling than the officially released ones.
So, their points?
1. Think Of The Children! (oh dear)
2. You're funding terrorism! (without spending)
3. Inferior products! (except.. they're better).
So, can anyone re-order these words into a popular phrase or sentence:
On, stand, leg, to, don't, they, a, have
Don't forget... (Score:3, Informative)
I seriously cannot stand Orrin Hatch. I used to be a Sean Hannity listener until he had Hatch on his program (who proceeded to bump me off the line as a caller, btw).
Copyright holders (especially media copyright holders): Wake the fsck up. Your existing business model has been obviated by technology. No amount of legislation can save it now. FIGURE OUT SOMETHING ELSE.
Lier? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Foreign jurisdictions (Score:4, Informative)
And how is it that the Digital Imprimatur is happening right now? Well take a look at this Slashdot story Cisco Working to Block Viruses at the Router. [slashdot.org] But guess what? The Slashdot story completely missed one vital point. These new Cisco routers DO NO BLOCK VIRUSES. No, what they really do is check that you are running a TRUSTED COMPUTER and then they remotely scan the software running on your computer. If you are not Tursted Computing compliant, or of you are not running the approved and mandated software (or if you are running prohibited software) THEN THIS ROUTER DENIES YOU INTERNET ACCESS.
Of course it is being billed to enforce that you are running an approved and up-to-date firewall and/or anti-virus software and/or that your operating system has the latest patches. That's how it supposedly "fights viruses".
Of course enforcing that you are using a Trusted Computer means that you no longer own/control your own computer. Of course enforcing that you are running all of that approved software and latest approved operating system patchs also means that you are forced to run only the approved operating system (Palladium anyone?). It also means that if you attempt to change any of your settings or modify your software in any way you get locked out completely, you lose your net connection, you can't open any of your 'secure' files, and most of your software will refuse to run.
It's true that ISP's can't start installing these new Cisco Routers unless most of their customers already have Trusted Hardware - they'd be locking out almost all of their customers. However the plan is to simply include the Trust Chip as standard hardware on all new motherboards sold, starting this year. They don't have to convince you to buy a new Trusted Computer, they simply HAND you the new hardware when you replace your old PC. There's no reason not to accept a computer with the Trust Chip in it, you can simply leave the chip off and the machine can do everything a normal computer can do and run all existing software. Over the course of 4 years or so essentially all PC's get replaced as obsolete. Around 2008 or so pretty much everyone is expected to have a Trust Chip. Then the ISP's can install the new routers and lock out anyone that has failed to comply. It will only be a few percent, and the company will simply say "Your Fault, you have an incompatible computer, go buy a modern machine to replace your obsolete hunk of junk."
At a Washington DC Global Tech Summit, Richard Clarke Special Advisor to the President for Cyberspace Security called on ISP's to enforce exactly such a policy. See the PDF here. [bsa.org] His speech starts on page 7, but you can skip to the last two paragraphs on page 11 through the end. He says TCPA(Trusted Computing) is a "Good beginning, but not enough", tells ISPs to use TCPA to enforce the use of firewalls and other software in order to get a hookup, asks them to implement a National Strategy to Defend Cyberspace. He asks them to do so "in the spirit of 9/11", to do so for our National Economy, to do so for our National Defence, to do so for Our Way Of Life For People Around The Globe, and even to defend us against Osama bin Laden himself. And the PDF notes that the audience responded with applause.
If there is no massive public backlash against Trusted Computing it will simply be dumped in our laps and the sky will become very dark indeed.
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