Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) last week introduced legislation called the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 just before press time. This follows a leak two weeks ago of an earlier version of the bill that is quite a piece of work if you read it literally. But I wonder if that’s what we’re supposed to do.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) last week introduced legislation called the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 just before press time. This follows a leak two weeks ago of an earlier version of the bill that is quite a piece of work if you read it literally. But I wonder if that’s what we’re supposed to do.
The leaked version, which went by the name of the Inducement Devolves into Unlawful Child Exploitation Act of 2004, had some people active in the copyright debate going ballistic. It’s easy to see why.
The core of the act, at least in the early version (I haven’t had access to the actual bill yet), extends the definition of a copyright infringer to “whoever intentionally induces any violation” of copyright laws. It says: “intentionally induces means intentionally aids, abets, induces, counsels 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.”
Read literally, this could mean that anyone selling a product that could be used to infringe copyright would be guilty of infringement. Hatch is from Utah and parts of Utah are quite stark and empty (and beautiful as I can attest), but I doubt that none of his constituents use the Internet or own PCs, copiers, scanners, cameras, VCRs, TiVo, portable music players, paper, pens or pencils. Since all of these could be used to make illegal copies of copyrighted material under the literal wording of this bill, anyone selling any of these could be guilty of copyright infringement. This could get a bit dicey for Intel, Microsoft and pencil makers. (By the way, there is a neat Web site all about pencils at www.pencils.com.)
This is not the first time Hatch has come up with half- or quarter-baked anti-copyright infringement ideas. It is entirely believable that he would introduce a bill like this even though at best this bill looks like it was written by the teenage kid of a movie studio executive who was trying to protect his inheritance.
But maybe the draft of the bill has served its purpose already. Maybe its only purpose was to be leaked just to set off a cacophony of outrage and scorn. Maybe Hatch thinks he can introduce a somewhat less wacko bill that will sail through because it looks so good in comparison.
Conjuring up a bogeyman then killing it off as a way to distract people while you sneak a little devil into the room is not a new concept. If that’s what Hatch is doing, then we need to be on the lookout for the little devil. It should be showing up any day now.
Disclaimer: Cacophony at Harvard is hardly new, but the above addition to the Induce cacophony is mine, not the university’s.
