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Musicians on the INDUCE act

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There’s a bill currently being debated in the US Senate, called the INDUCE act (here’s a good background on it), that aims to criminalize P2P networks, programmers, software compnaies, and anyone else that can be shown to help “induce copyright infringement.”

Many law observers have criticized the act’s broad language, but the Future of Music Coalition surveyed musicians to get their opinions on the target of the act, P2P networks. The final product of the survey is a letter to the senate committee debating the bill. The key points are illuminating and worth restating here: artists don’t feature in discussions of the bill (just large music labels and technology companies), the bill assumes all copyright owners do not want their works shared on P2P networks (35% of musicians they surveyed saw value in P2P sharing for them), and the bill doesn’t allow market-based (like licensing) solutions to occur. Former Creative Commons featured commoner Scott Andrew highlights the survey, the letter, and his problems with the bill in this post.

Posted 06 August 2004

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