TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Anti-P2P bill Hatched and fast-tracked: Don’t let pols dumb us down

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In late 2002 I wrote a TeleRead item called “The Backwards West?”–noting how our medieval-minded politicians are jeopardizing America’s superiority in areas such as biotech. Meanwhile countries like China are avoiding such stupidity and creating a reverse brain drain from the U.S. with some cutting-edge researchers fleeing our so-called enlightenment. Might the day come when the real progress happens in non-Western cultures, as when the Moslems led in such areas as science and math–and, in Spain, even the treatment of Jews? There is always hope, though. Even Nancy Reagan, indeed especially Nancy Reagan, is speaking out nowadays for stem cell research. The tide may be turning amid the realization that Washington’s stupidity could be delaying the development of successful treatments of Alzheimer’s Disease and other conditions.

Needed: A Nancy Reagan of high tech

Now we need a Nancy Reagan of high tech. If legislation like the INDUCE Act passes, would a Senator’s spouse please get jailed and fined? Then maybe the bozos across the Potomac from me can finally grasp the dangers of letting Hollywood control American technology.

Tired of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which limit your ability to crack DRM and make backups of DVDs and e-books and the like? You ain’t seen nothing yet, according to Ernest Miller, one of the most prolific and cogent contributors to the Yale LawMeme and other authoritative legal blogs. He has torn apart Sen. Orrin Hatch’s defense of the INDUCE act, which, among other things, is Hollywood’s nasty way of banning P2P technology or at least making its use far, far more problematic legally than it is now. From iPODs to VCRs, technologies could be harmed in one way or another. INDUCE makes it easier than ever to hold software and hardware developers responsible for copyright-related actions of users. On top of everything else, by creating new legal threats to cash-starved competitors, INDUCE in some ways would make it easier for companies such as Microsoft to sustain monopolies. Even an attorney for a descendant of the old Bell monopolies, however, Verizon, is up in arms over INDUCE. Of course, INDUCE could be catnip for U.S. rivals overseas, not just in Asia but in Europe.

The child-porn excuse

In case you’re wondering about the name of the proposed law, it alludes to the idea that the mere availability of technology can contribute to violations–and along the way lure children to iniquitous porn. But of course! Protect the children. Never mind that P2P could drive down the cost of educational technology and enrich life on the Net in new ways for all generations. Consider Net telephony. Not so coincidentally, Skype, my Net telephone service, which offers better-than-phone quality, uses P2P techniques developed originally for the KaZaA music-sharing service. Needless to say, P2B can be used for distribution of public domain books–in fact, copyrighted ones, too. Ernie Miller isn’t the biggest fan of DRM, and I’m not either, but one possibility is the use of accessible sample chapters combined with either (1) locked files that a credit card number or library card number or something else would open or (2) links to e-bookstores. Project Gutenberg is already encouraging file-swapping of its public domain editions. Imagine, too, the potential of P2P for distributing multimedia files associated with education. Those are just a few examples of the promise of P2P as an enlightener of children and the rest of us. But politicians apparently care far more about campaign money from Hollywood, even if the end result is really to be anti-child.

Hatch’s P2P-bashing legislation, alas, is on the fast track, with such influential friends as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Minority Leader Tom Daschle; and if you care about technological progress, you really should be writing or phoning your congress member now and attaching the Miller analysis of the Act. If you’re with a library or school, send it to your employer’s counsel and tell how useful P2B is or could be to you.

Other links:

–The INDUCE Act and the Right to Prepare Derivative Works, Supporting the INDUCE Act, Crawford on the INUDUCE Act: Not with a Sledgehammer, But a Stiletto, Pirate Act + Induce Act=???, EFF’s Mock INDUCE Act Lawsuit–in The Importance of…, the Miller blog.

–Stop INDUCE: action web site story on P2Pnet.net (source of the wicket graphic at the top of this blog posting).

–EFF Demonstrates How To Use New Law Against Apple, iPod, from The Mac Observer.

–INDUCE Act is Free Speech Killer, from Copyfight: the politics of IP.

Detail: Alas, Blogger accidentally killed off the link to the “Backwards West,” but you can see an excerpt in Jerry Justiango’s blog (scroll down to the entry for December 19, 2002).