Induce Act not dead yet

Xeni Jardin in Wired News: Hollywood loves it. Techies hate it. And now, nine senators are signing on to help it pass. That's the latest chapter in the short history of the Induce Act, a bill aimed at cracking down on technologies that can be used to steal copyright works.

During Senate hearings over the Induce Act in July, the U.S. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters -- an Induce supporter -- said she believed new legislation should modernize the precedent set in a 1984 Supreme Court decision addressing the legality of the Sony Betamax. The court ruling, which protected technologies "capable of non-infringing uses," should be "replaced by a more flexible rule that is more meaningful in the technological age," Peters said.

Once again, it's abundantly clear that the U.S. Register of Copyrights is an enemy of creative reuses of digital materials by the public. "Modernize" the Betamax ruling? She -- and a disappointing phalanx of senators, including Tom Daschle (whose campaign I've contributed to!) -- are out to gut it.