Grokster and the INDUCE Act

CNet News reports:

In the course of [the Grokster] hearing, several of the justices appeared interested in finding a middle ground that would focus on companies that actively encouraged, or "induced," copyright infringement.

A similar idea was at the core of last year's debate over the "Induce Act," a U.S. Senate bill sponsored by the record labels and staunchly opposed by much of the technology world. . . .

The inducement idea hinted at by the court could open new vistas in copyright law, drawing a line for acceptable behavior in the technology world which has remained ambiguous for years. . . .

The trick is to figure out exactly what "inducement" might mean.

Commenting on the above article, Freedom to Tinker writes:

There's a big difference between the Induce Act and the kind of narrow active inducement standard that was suggested to the court. Indeed, the main advocate to the court of an active inducement standard was IEEE-USA, which testified against the Induce Act. Here, as always, the details matter. A decision by the court to adopt an active inducement standard could be very good news, or very bad news, depending on the specifics of what the court says.

The worst case, in some respects, is probably the one Fred von Lohmann mentions in the article, in which the court endorses the general idea of an inducement standard, but doesn't fill in the details. If that happens, we'll be stuck with years and years of litigation to figure out what the court meant.

Prior post: Grokster and the Active Inducement Test (Apr. 3, 2005).