Work On US Copyright Bill Ramped Up Following Appeals Court Ruling On File Sharing

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

27 August 2004

Consumer and technology groups such as the Consumer Electrics Association, the American Library Association, and DigitalConsumer.org have responded to a request for comment on the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act, sponsored by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont).

The legislation is designed to hold technology firms liable for encouraging their customers to infringe copyright, but testifying at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this year, president of the Consumer Electrics Association, Gary Shapiro urged that the language of the bill be substantially amended, arguing that in its initial format, the proposed law would stifle innovation in the technology industry.

According to the recommendations made by the various interest groups which commented on the legislation, the bill should be phrased in such a way that "only someone who distributes a commercial computer program that is 'specifically designed' for wide-scale piracy on digital networks could be held liable for copyright violations".

Under the terms of the proposed law as it currently stands, products which can be used for copyright infringement but serve substantially non-infringing purposes will continue to be legal, and ISPs, credit card firms, librarians, advertising agencies and venture capitalists will all be exempted from liability.

This follows a ruling delivered in the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month which announced that providers of file sharing services such as Kazaa, Grokster and Morpheus are not liable for the copyright infringing activities of their customers, provided that they were not directly able to stop the acts in question.

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