Rants: June 2004 Archives
Obiviously this is this news is on the top of all BLOGs, news sites and music lover communities a like. I've not read this act, but from aevery summary i read it seems that with this act, the RIAA can sue people who "encourages" the illegal sharing of music. Thus the free-music loving people of net fear that people like Apple, who make the iPods, can get sued because they make a device that easily lets u store a lot of "possible" illegal music, because simply, they are inducing us with their convient tech. This is one of the summaries:
The 'Induce Act'. will make the 'intentional inducement of copyright infringement' an offense, and this will extend liability to any manufacturer of a device which plays infringed material, or a shop that sells such a device.
There's obiviously a lot of coverage on this, but the most catchy one i read so far is form the register with this nice intro paragraph:
It may soon be possible to carry around an AK-47 assault rifle and an iPod with you down the street - and be arrested for carrying the iPod.
Of course the RIAA says this bill isnt meant to target people like Apple, but rather the P2P networks. But most online writers beleive it odes open the door to suits against manufactures of MP3 players.
Wired Article.
a another Wired Article about the bill.
An article by a professor in Japan, that seems to be going around today.
Elcetronic Frontier Foundations' efforts to make a mock lawsuit against Apple, to illustrate the danger of this bill.
The Bill (in PDF).
So um, yes there will be no comdex this year. According to this post at BoingBoing.net (Link). Also Lollapalooza is canceled. So what is a Tech Savy music lover to do this year?
According to the press release, the new company that took over the Comdex brand name, MediaLive, says that they want to re-evaluate the purpose of Comdex and its invovlvement in the IT industry. I mean theres more beyond giving out bags of free toy and T-shirts?? Not sure if this mean anything. Bad IT economy? IT reform? or just that MediaLive need better structure. Who knows, but this feels dramatic for some reason.
