what the hell?
Ed Felten has posted about a recent EFF article on Orrin Hatch's latest bill, the INDUCE Act, which targets those whose products or activities "induce" copyright infringements. As the EFF rightly points out, this creates "an entirely new form of liability". The EFF mentions a couple of examples of individuals who could be prosecuted under the act, including counselors or journalists.
I haven't read the text, so I can't be sure of this, but given the information I have here is my concern. Some brilliant theory weenie could prove that a major security protocol is in fact insecure (after all, very few security protocols are provably secure) by discovering a weakness, and publishes this discovery in a major academic journal, consequently receiving a lot of press which causes the weakness to become widely known. If this protocol has been used to protect a single copyrighted work, the holder of that copyright could sue the researcher for this. That's beyond the line.
Let's look at this in a little detail. There are three different people who can be sued for a copyright infringement of this sort. Person A discovers a weakness in a technique which is used by DRM program P, and publishes the weakness without even discussing program P. Person B writes a software program Q based on Person A's weakness to exploit program P. Person C uses Person B's program Q to actually decode a copyrighted work protected by program P.
Very few people would argue that Person C is not legally liable for his/her actions. However, Person C is very hard to catch. The RIAA has tried and tried to damage Person B in a number of cases, though many people have argued that program Q is free speech (without convincing many). Often Person B is outside the US, though, and untouchable. Now they're going to start taking on Person A, the researcher and academic.
You may argue that Persons A and B are frequently the same, and that is true. But there are a number of people trying hard to be Person A so they can get their publications and their grants and their tenure, or their patents and their royalties and bonuses. They don't want to be Person B, and they certainly aren't trying to encourage Person C (most of them). Leave them alone.
Update:According to this CNET News article the bill is mostly targetting Person B and program Q - the reversal of the old Betamax decision that decided the Betamax player was capable of "substantial noninfringing use" and thus was not inherently illegal. It is targetted at P2P file-sharing programs (which are also capable of substantial noninfringing use). While realizing this could have kept me from the above diatribe, I stand by my thoughts that the act could be used to target Person A in future uses (once they have the act, after all, they'll use it for whatever they can).
I haven't read the text, so I can't be sure of this, but given the information I have here is my concern. Some brilliant theory weenie could prove that a major security protocol is in fact insecure (after all, very few security protocols are provably secure) by discovering a weakness, and publishes this discovery in a major academic journal, consequently receiving a lot of press which causes the weakness to become widely known. If this protocol has been used to protect a single copyrighted work, the holder of that copyright could sue the researcher for this. That's beyond the line.
Let's look at this in a little detail. There are three different people who can be sued for a copyright infringement of this sort. Person A discovers a weakness in a technique which is used by DRM program P, and publishes the weakness without even discussing program P. Person B writes a software program Q based on Person A's weakness to exploit program P. Person C uses Person B's program Q to actually decode a copyrighted work protected by program P.
Very few people would argue that Person C is not legally liable for his/her actions. However, Person C is very hard to catch. The RIAA has tried and tried to damage Person B in a number of cases, though many people have argued that program Q is free speech (without convincing many). Often Person B is outside the US, though, and untouchable. Now they're going to start taking on Person A, the researcher and academic.
You may argue that Persons A and B are frequently the same, and that is true. But there are a number of people trying hard to be Person A so they can get their publications and their grants and their tenure, or their patents and their royalties and bonuses. They don't want to be Person B, and they certainly aren't trying to encourage Person C (most of them). Leave them alone.
Update:According to this CNET News article the bill is mostly targetting Person B and program Q - the reversal of the old Betamax decision that decided the Betamax player was capable of "substantial noninfringing use" and thus was not inherently illegal. It is targetted at P2P file-sharing programs (which are also capable of substantial noninfringing use). While realizing this could have kept me from the above diatribe, I stand by my thoughts that the act could be used to target Person A in future uses (once they have the act, after all, they'll use it for whatever they can).
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