The lowdown on the IICA hearing

The IICA hearing (officially titled "Protecting Innovation and Art while Preventing Piracy") did not turn out as badly as it could have, in fact it went very well for those opposed to the introduction of the INDUCE Act.

Nearly every single witness at the hearing came out against IICA, with Gary Shapiro, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Consumer Electronics Association going so far as to say that a new law is completely unnecessary (here's his press release). Most of the other witnesses stated that they thought a new and less broadly worded version of IICA should be drafted. Even the BSA, who recently put out that possibly dodgy piracy study came out to say they want IICA rewritten (here's their press release, and Robert Holleyman's testimony).

The only witness in favor of the INDUCE Act as written was Mitch Bainwol, the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Recording Industry Association of America (which was predictable). Bainwol stayed away from actually talking about the legal ramifications of IICA and instead mainly discussed how evil the P2P networks were and how file trading was hurting their industry. Shockingly, he said he would be willing to work with IICA if it were considered to be too broad.

Also, Marybeth Peters, the head of the United States Copyright Office strongly supports IICA, but never got to comment on whether she thought a rewrite may be in order. Here is her testimony, via Copyfight.

The conclusion of the hearing was that everyone needs to go back to the drawing board and redraft the law. Sen. Hatch is adamant that "something must be done," so it appears that there is no going back. On the other hand, it seemed that the tech industry representatives had Hatch agreeing with them that the substantial noninfringing uses Betamax doctrine should be codified, which must be scaring the crap out of the RIAA.

It also sounded like the intent standard is a big issue and there was some conversation about using the more objective specific standard utilized by the patent law for inducement. This intent standard would make IICA much less dangerous to tech companies and innovation. In fact, if a new version of IICA codified Betamax and specifically stated that inducement in copyright would use the same specific intent standard as patent then the INDUCE Act really would not change the copyright law very much at all (a good thing).

Finally, Sen. Hatch stated that he wanted to crank this new IICA bill out during August, so get ready for a quick and bumpy ride. It's guaranteed to shock and thrill!

For blow-by-blow commentary on the hearing check out Ed Felton's Freedom-to-Tinker. Thanks to Ed for hosting the party.