The oldest group of conservative activists has joined the chorus opposing an anti-file swapping bill. The American Conservative Union has launched a large-scale ad campaign against the so-called Induce Act, saying third parties should no more be held liable for others' criminal acts than, for example, the auto industry should be held liable for a drunk driver's crime.
"This misguided legislation would hold manufacturers of computers, software and other technologies criminally liable if their legal products were misused to reproduce copyrighted material," said ACU executive director Richard Lessner, announcing the ad campaign, which aims at newspapers and magazines.
Adult video and film producers Titan Media have taken a cautious view at the Induce Act.
"We feel there definitely has to be some change in the law, in the interest of protecting copyright and protecting children from gaining access to adult material," Titan attorney Gill Sperlein told AVNOnline.com when the bill was introduced. "But we continue to believe that peer-to-peer technology, if appropriately used, is good technology. We're not in a camp that says P2P should be done away with altogether. We just think it needs to be controlled, so copyright infringement is curtailed."
Titan has taken the low-key road to stop illegal swapping of Titan films on the P2P networks, working quietly with Internet service providers to get subscribers to stop, rather than slamming them with litigation and exposure.
Lessner agreed that copyright infringement should be curtailed without holding third parties responsible.
"It is a basic foundation of American jurisprudence, recognized in the Supreme Court's landmark Sony Betamax decision, that those who actually violate copyrights should be held criminally responsible, not those who manufactured the computer, VCR, copy machine, or computer software used to infringe," he continued. "[The Induce Act] is tantamount to holding gun makers liable for the acts of armed criminals, or automakers responsible for drunk drivers."
ACU deputy director Stacie Rumenap called the bill a product of Hollywood liberals looking to crush innovation – an argument, minus the allusion to Hollywood liberals, often forwarded by peer-to-peer defenders. "What's sad is that they've got Republicans on their side," Rumenap said. A Senate committee vote on the bill is scheduled for Thursday.
The chief sponsor is Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who said the bill was aimed at discouraging children to commit crimes as he believes P2P networks like KaZaA, Grokster, and Morpheus do. That was before a federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling holding that Grokster and Morpheus could not be made liable for copyright infringements committed by users of their networks.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tennessee) is another powerful enough Republican backing the Induce Act. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-North Dakota) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, also back the bill, which would contravene the Grokster/Morpheus ruling among other things.
Lessner said Hatch especially "should know better [about] the dangerous nature of this trial-attorney boondoggle." Lessner said protecting intellectual property rights and warding off copyright infringement are serious problems, the Induce Act's "standard of inducement" is so subjective and broad that it would stifle technological innovation, restrict consumer choices severely, and create a new class of litigation for "predatory trial attorneys."
"An important principle is at stake here," he said. "If this bill were to become law, it would set a precedent for holding innocent Americans liable for indirectly 'inducing' criminal acts in others. The implications are staggering."
The first anti-Induce Act ads by the ACU began appearing last week in The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.
