POLITICS: Orin Hatch - RIAA Shill, Aims To Kill Tech

The technology terrorist, Orrin Hatch, introduced this legislation that is heavily biased toward the entertainment industry at the expense of consumers, individual developers and small companies that develop technology. It will have a particularly negative impact on small software developers that do not have the resources to defend themselves against the highly paid entertainment industry lawyers.



Comments such as these were representative of the technology industry's take of the legislation:
"We think this is a recipe for disaster for the Internet...", "It's the biggest threat to technology in 20 years..." and "This takes an objective standard and replaces it with a subjective one..."

I do hope the rest of the congress has the good sense to vote down this clearly partisan legislation.

[edit on 22-7-2004 by df1]

[edit on 7-22-2004 by Valhall]

Booo

Bad, ban the ipod and other MP3 players? Come on

Scratch hatch

This will all end when PAC money and campaign contributions get reclassified and called what they really are... bribes. As long as people are allowed to bribe lawmakers like this crap like this will keep coming up.

My thoughts are that its too late now, they'll ban one network and another one will pop-up to take its place. Eventually a network that has purely encrypted traffic on it will emerge and take place. I like the idea of BitTorrent where every user plays a part and assembles files from each other creating the final download. Just slap some security on it and start sharing

That is the stupidest thing ever. Why is this government to uptight about everything? It all started with Lars from Metallica, one of my favorite bands, when Lars filed the lawsuit against Napster they became sell outs. I would be glad people are downloading my music even if I don't get paid as long as they enjoy it. Even the movie industry is selling out, what ever happened to doing stuff for the love of it? They can try as hard as they can but P2P, DVD ripping/burning software will be around.

If Orrin Hatch (the name sounds like some kind of disease anyways) dosen't get voted out in this next election, then I'm going to wonder why we hold elections at all! This INDUCE act is outrageous! It would basically shut down most all forms of technological innovation! Why would someone even think of it!

the gov ought to concentrate more on eliminating spam and viruses/spyware/malware, etc than music downloaders

Atleast that would benefit EVERYONE

The record industry has a bad product and instead of facing the fact and trying to correct the problem they try and use legislation as a feel good thing for their shareholders. They are trying to blame the public for their shortcomings. They whine about piracy. Look at the movie industry. They face the exact same problem yet they continue to have record sales. Why? Because they continue to put out a better product and give people value for their money. The record industry does not. They continue to mass produce boy bands and h0 chics in hopes of leeching money from teens. Look at American Idol. What a joke. But this is the best the music industry can come up with.

Nice Indy

I agree, all this is impairing the arts... its not about talent, or fun anymore, its about $$$

Whatever happened to the days of having a garage band and practicing real hard to get somewhere. What happens now is you get sued for playing cover tunes OR if you are good enough to write your own music you never get anywhere because you don't know someone or you haven't pleased Simon.

On that note... I emailed my senator and asked him NOT to support any technology limiting legislation supported by Hatch or the RIAA. I encourage you all to do the same.

Originally posted by df1
The technology terrorist, Orrin Hatch, introduced this legislation that is heavily biased toward the entertainment industry at the expense of consumers, individual developers and small companies that develop technology.

Hatch is at it again eh?

He has done much dammage already in the intellectual property field. INDUCE Act, expanding the Hatch-Waxman Act, Oh and this little gem:

One of the difficulties in talking about S. 507 is that it is not just about prior-user rights: It is a complex omnibus bill that also includes controversial provisions such as corporatizing the patent office and broadening the ability of a patentee's opponents to challenge a patent within the patent office throughout the life of the patent. Source

Someone better tell orrin that the internet is global and not subject to the laws of one country.

Coupled with the fact that universal military grade encryption for p2p is just around the corner

I've had a few ideas for encryption that I'd like to see anyone break. Only thing is the sender and receiver would have to have the key to handle the message. It would be virtually unbreakable. Even if it could be broken it would take so long that the message would have already become outdated.

Copyright owners should not be permitted to restrict the development of technology having non-copyright-infringing uses, unless the developer actively and independently induces a copyright infringement, Andrew C. Greenberg testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) today.

Greenberg, vice-chair of the IEEE-USA Intellectual Property Committee (IPC) and an attorney with Carlton Fields, P.A. of Tampa, Fla., testified on the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 (S.2560). IEEE-USA believes that neither the bill nor the status quo adequately balances the interests of those who create digital copyrighted content and those who create the technology to deliver, or otherwise make use of that content.
Link

This legislation should not exist, period. IMHO the original language is severly tough in order to create a pretense of fairness. This allows the congress to insert kinder, gentler language and make legislators look like good guys, but the reality is the little guy takes up the... as usual. This is coming folks, whether we like it or not. Both side of the aisle are bought and paid for.
.

Our whole economy works on the priciple of protectionism (passing laws like copyright to protect your product from "unfair" competition on the market).

That's like the Casinos in Vegas having 0 and 00 both green: you lure a punter in to play the game under the pretense that it is a fair game and then you fix it!

Its called the "free" market, free to play and loose that is. Costs a ton in "lobbying" to pass the laws to help you win it though.

Wow, looks like I have better hurry up and get MutantNES from flow-charts to actual executable code. Seriously though, this is just flat out wrong. I can understand if this intellectual property was rented or otherwise loaned out, but this is not the case. Music, Movie, and Software peeps are getting the short stick since they cannot use it where ever and when ever they please, they cannot share it with friends (and retrieve the material later). Fair Use is slowly melting away and will probably cease being a concept in a decade. There is a thorn in my head called keyless encryption, I think I will keep playing with that for awhile.

Corinthas I disagree on the idea of protection. At least as stated. Because of the outright abuse of IP law it has become a system to protect people from any and all competition. It has resulted in unfair pricing schemes. Competition is good. Competition results in better products and better prices. When you allow our IP laws to be abused the way they are all that consumer protection is tossed out the window so a few people can become billionaires.

Tell Orrin to go back in the closet and leave music alone!!!!

they should bring a bar / a max. of money the artist may earn. its idiotic we have to pay 22 euro's in europe for a cd because the artist have to earn 25 milion dollars :S or at least 50000 dollar a month

American politicians would have to be the dumbest on earth to pass that.

Cameras, computers, video recorders, photo copiers, DVD burners, scanners, CD and video tape makers etc would all be liable for everything.

The price of these items would multiply many, many times just to cover the inflated awards in any court cases.

This is almost too stupid to be true!