U.S. Senate bill targets Internet song-swapping
Wednesday, June 23, 2004 Posted: 1:02 PM EDT (1702 GMT)


WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Senate leaders late Tuesday introduced a bill to make it easier to sue "peer-to-peer" services like Kazaa and eDonkey 2000, which allow users to copy music and movies for free over the Internet.

The Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act of 2004 would allow companies to be held liable if they "intentionally induce" copyright infringement.

Under a recent U.S. court ruling, peer-to-peer networks cannot be held liable if consumers use them to distribute copyrightable works.

While that case is being appealed, the recording industry has sued 3,429 individual peer-to-peer users, many of them underage.

In remarks on the Senate floor, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch said peer-to-peer companies were exposing children to legal risks.

"It is illegal and immoral to induce or encourage children to commit crimes," said Hatch, who as chairman of the Judiciary Committee oversees copyright matters.

The odds of any new bill becoming law are slim, as Congress has only 35 working days scheduled before the fall elections.

But the bill has powerful backers, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Sen. Tom Daschle, the Democratic Senate leader, and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

The recording industry managed to use copyright law to shut down the first file-sharing service, Napster, which has recently been resurrected as an industry-approved pay service.

But the industry has had less luck against second-generation services like Kazaa and Grokster, which claim their decentralized architecture prevents them from controlling user behavior.

A U.S. district court last year said these networks could not be held liable because, like photocopiers and videocassette recorders, they do not commit copyright infringement but merely make it possible.

The nonprofit policy group Public Knowledge said the bill is too broad, as it could discourage investment in new technology and expose people to lawsuits who do not mean to encourage copyright infringement.

Trade groups representing movie studios and record labels praised the bill.