Let me add a hardy, “Here, here!” for my buddy Nick’s opinion of the INDUCE Act. Down with this evil, down I say!

As stated in the bill “the term `intentionally induces’ means intentionally aids, abets, induces, or procures, and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement”… of what you ask?

Of copyright silly… well in terms of intentionality, that could easily be interpreted as meaning that anyone that produces a product with a known capability that ‘may’ be used for copyright infringement and goes ahead and sells the product anyway. So if you wanted to interpret this bill broadly, your VCR, computer hard drive, tape recorder and camcorder are all a source of possible copyright infringement and should be determined to be illegal because they enable a person to infringe on copyright. The same could be said for the iPod as noted in NPR’s Day 2 Day piece “Proposed ‘Induce Act’ Could Outlaw iPods”.

For clarification, following is the actual bill
(I’m just a bill, on capital hill…):

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

June 22, 2004
Mr. HATCH (for himself, Mr. LEAHY, Mr. FRIST, Mr. DASCHLE, Mr. GRAHAM of South Carolina, and Mrs. BOXER) introduced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary