Ernie rebuts Hollywood and the music industry shiller’s Hatch & Leahy’s new “Induce Act“, which criminalizes the act of inducing another to commit a copyright violation.
The EFF posts a fake complaint against Apple Computer, maker of the ipod.
Daily Archives: June 25, 2004
The Decline of “Old Media”
James Cramer writes about Old Media Giant Viacom’s difficulties:
Viacom SOS. No, to find out why Viacom?s stock sank to the 52-week-low list, all you need to do is look to the 52-week-high list, where the winners are: video games, satellite radio, video-on-demand, and Internet search engines. Those are the companies with the better models, the better technology that has, in an incredibly short period of time, stolen massive amounts of the fuel that powered Battleship Viacom: the viewers themselves.
Congress goes after your fair use rights
Dan Gillmor writes about the latest version of the “best law money can buy“:
I hadn’t been taking some proposed new copyright legislation very seriously, mainly because it’s logically absurd on its face. But the “Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004” (PDF) seems to be moving so quickly that we have to pay attention now.
This bill, the stated purpose of which is to criminalize actions that might “induce” copyright infringement, doesn’t just overrule the Sony Betamax case, which gave us the right to tape TV shows to watch later. It would turn people offering totally legitimate technology into criminals, if what they offered could also be used for infringing purposes.
Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch is cloaking the bill as “child protection.” It is nothing of the sort. It is a Hollywood-sponsored attack on fundamental freedom, and on innovation. (Ernie Miller deconstructs Hatch’s floor speech introducing the bill. See also Lessig’s comments.)