Induce Act is due for serious consideration on Thursday

The Induce Act will be put under serious consideration on Thursday in the US Senate.  If put into effect, it will outlaw the manufacturing and development of any equipment that can assist with copyright infringement.  Not only would this outlaw P2P networks and effectively VCRs, but could potentially put the manufactures of everyday equipment such as hard drives, optical drives, cassette recorders and portable music players at risk.  This law
would also effectively put the movie and recording industry in control of
technology that can handle audio or video content.

 

Unfortunately, the movie and recording industry are spending a huge amount of money to push this Act.  Just a few weeks ago, another Act known as the "Digital Media Consumer's Rights Act" is also expected to get a serious hearing in the US Congress. However, this Act has the total opposite proposal to what the Induce Act is aiming for.  One wishes to change the DMCA to allow fair-use backups of copy-protected content, where as the other wishes to prohibit any sort of unauthorised copying at all.  GristyMcFisty submitted the following news via our  news submit :

THE US Senate Judiciary Committee is seriously considering a bill on Thursday which many in the technology industry say will drag the country kicking and screaming into a pre-tech dark age. The Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (S. 2560) was introduced last month by Orrin Hatch head of the Senate Judiciary Committee will outlaw peer-to-peer networks and prohibit the development of technologies that enable copyright theft. This means the maker of any device including video, hard-drives, floppy disks, which the film and video industry thinks can be used to copy its wonderful products could face jail. While some users in the industry would like to see the key players go to jail for something, many do not want to see the technology they have created go under. Read the full article here.

 

Even if the Induce Act goes into effect, I cannot see every hard drive, MP3 player and optical drive manufacturer suddenly shutting down, but it will certainly mean a change to how they advertise their products and design future products.  Software will likely be the main area targeted since
tools such as CD rippers, CD recording software, MP3 encoding tools could all
easily assist with piracy.

 

What would likely happen is the music and movie industry would be on the look out for any sort of product's advertisement that includes phrases like 'stores xxx MP3's", 'copies CDs", 'easily share" and so on that could entice the end user to use their product illegally.  DRM enforcement would also surely be pushed and at some later stage, the entertainment industries may start going after those who do not enforce copy-protection measures on their equipment.

Source: The Inquirer