There is an important story over at Wired today, in fact, it's a must read. It's our old friend Orrin Hatch again, however, if you think his idea of destroying your computer if you download copyrighted content was bizarre, wait till you grasp the implications of this latest proposal. Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider a bill that would hold technology companies liable for any product they make that encourages people to steal copyright materials. Yes, it sounds too ridiculous to be true, but it is and it has made it to the Senate of the United States of America.
This bill if passed, could set the tech industry back 30 years, if you think about it, it could destroy it. Your VCR, which is just about obsolete, would be subject to this new law and the manufacturer would be liable for any loss to the copyright holder. Can you imagine that suddenly, there would no longer be copy machines in your office? I suppose you could even say a scanner is taboo depending on what you do with it.
The brainchild of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the Inducing of Copyright Infringement Act of 2004 would, in the senator's words, "simply confirm that existing law would allow artists to bring civil actions against parties who intend to induce others to infringe copyrights."
Now, it is no secret that the target of this bill are the P2P networks. Last year, the recording industry was dealt a devastating blow when a lower court ruled that Grokster and Morpheus, weren't liable for copyright infringement committed by their users. As we read this, a panel of Federal Appeals judges in California is deliberating this subject, the speculation is that the recording industry will lose this appeal and the panel will agree with the prior ruling. But, no worries for the labels, due to the language used in this new horrific bill, it would "simply" as the good Senator put it, cover any technology under the sun.
In the Betamax decision, the Supreme Court ruled that any technology that people use for legal purposes would be legal -- even if the device could be used for illegal purposes, like content piracy. Because of the ruling, the consumer electronics industry and Hollywood went on to develop a thriving market in home video and DVDs. "This takes an objective standard and replaces it with a subjective one that allows a copyright holder to try and determine the intent of a company when producing a product," Erickson said. "It's not outside the realm of possibility that you would be placing the entertainment industry in charge of technological innovation if this law were passed." |
Head on over to Wired and read the whole article. This is going to be a very important ruling that will impact every facet of society whether you are a consumer, artist, manufacturer or worker. It is definately, the most far reaching legislation we have seen so far. This will encompass not only hardware but software too, it feasably could make a PC illegal to manufacture.
Did I mention that Hatch may be especially focused on such issues, due to the fact that he has received 158,000 dollars in campaign "contributions" from the television, movie and music industries? These were our dollars, yours and mine that he received. We financed this bill. Is this what we expect an elected a public official to do? Prance around Washington doing favors for the entertainment industry, I think not.
Source: Wired
