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I’ve been reading about the INDUCE Act for a few days now, and it’s pretty freakin’ horrible. Basically, the proposed law would make any device or company that ‘encourages’ people to download music, liable for all sorts of damage. Here’s a few choice quotes and the articles I got them from:

INDUCE Act: Ipecac for Fair Use:

Ernest Miller brought to my attention something called the INDUCE Act, a bit of proposed law spearheaded by Senator Orrin Hatch that could possibly be used by record companies to sue companies that “induce infringements of the Copyright Act,” meaning portable music stalwarts like Apple and Toshiba could be penalized for providing iPods (and the drives that power them) because they encourage users to download music. If by my description the proposed act seems too vague and indefinable, that’s because, basically, it is. The INDUCE Act would be another weapon in the music industry’s fight against its own customers — you and me.

EFF: Prelude to a Fake Complaint

Senator Orrin Hatch and his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee have introduced the Inducing Infringements of Copyright Act (”The Induce Act” [PDF, 25k]) this week. They want us to think the Act is no big deal, and that it targets only the bad guys while leaving the good guys alone. They say that it doesn’t change the law; it just clarifies it. But they’re wrong. And this legal complaint is the proof.

» Fake Complaint against Apple, Toshiba, and C-Net for Inducing Infringement of Copyrights

* PDF, 290k
* text, 19k
* or just keep reading…

Take a look. Scared yet? You should be. When the lawyers at EFF first sat down and asked “Whom could we sue under the Induce Act if we were an abusive copyright holder?” the answer was clear: pretty much everybody. Playing the devil’s advocates, we knew we could draft a legal complaint against any number of the major computer or electronics manufacturers for selling everyday devices we all know and love—CD burners, MP3 players, cell phones—and that with that complaint, we could file a lawsuit that would survive any attempt to dismiss it before trial, costing the targeted company up to $1,000,000 per month in legal fees alone. The Induce Act is a nasty, brutish stick in the hands of the wrong plaintiff.

Basically, the INDUCE Act would make things like the friggin’ iPod illegal. And while they’re at it, it would outlaw VCR’s, DVD burners, probably tape recorders, hell, most likely outlaw general purpose computers. It’s one of the worst abuses of law in the copyright arena that we’ve seen in a very long time, and something has to be done to stop it. Our best bet is the EFF: they know what they’re doing, they know what they’re talking about, and they have the means to do something about it. If you haven’t done so before, and you value your hard-earned digital freedoms, you might wanna consider joining the EFF and their friends in the fight against the INDUCE Act today.

UPDATE: You know what else gets my goat? The fact that this bullshit law would affect me, yet I am powerless to let my opinion be known about it, since Puerto Rico doesn’t have a congressional district assigned to it, so we don’t have a senator that we can complain to. Sure, we do have a ‘representative’, but all he can do is maybe talk about it a little, he holds no real power and can’t cast any votes. So, basically, this law can screw me up, and I can’t do diddly about it. Anyone out there in the states who actually has a representative up in Washington, take action on this. It affects more people than you think.