The INDUCE Act, Part 2...

cm. from LifeandLiberty sent me a comment about an earlier post that deserves a reply, but I decided to do so at (belated note: MUCH) greater length than the Comments section provided, so here goes.
Why am I on the "bandwagon" against the INDUCE Act?
Well, I'll tell you.

I own 2 VCRs. I own a digital camera, an audiocassette recorder, a CD burner, and a computer. And because I own all these things, I enjoy the ability to transfer freely the digital content that I've legally purchased into a form that suits whatever I'm currently doing.

A tape of my favorite CD for when I'm driving in a car with no CD player, for example. A backup copy of a movie I bought on DVD, so that I can still watch it if my original disc gets scratched. For that matter, a backup of a movie I bought on VHS.

But it's more than just that. See, I can use the CD burner to burn copies of ANY CD, whether or not I paid for it. I can tape TV programs, or even record songs off the radio. Those of you with TiVo boxes can record video from TV even better than I can. And, see, the INDUCE Act says that doing that is piracy, and subject to even more harsh penalties than you're already subject to under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which made it illegal to even talk about or host a webpage discussing, technical means of bypassing copy protection or encryption, even if the purpose of this is to improve security. DMCA took away your right to fair use, that is, your right to make a personal, private backup copy of whatever you buy, so that you don't have to buy a new DVD of "The Lion King" every time your five-year-old spills juice on it and scratches it off.

The INDUCE Act, on the other hand, goes much farther than the DMCA. The INDUCE Act says that if a device CAN be used for piracy, it IS piracy, even if no piracy has been committed.

As I said, I could do all these things. However, I almost never do. But that doesn't matter, anymore, because under the gimlet eye of the INDUCE Act the mere possession of a device which COULD pirate content, means you're a pirate. I have no urge to go to jail; I also have no urge to give back my VCRs because the movie companies are pissed off at some jackass in Thailand copying their movies.

Frankly, I believe that filesharing is an inevitable consequence of price gouging by the movie and music companies; it's not a mistake, or an error, that every time music prices drop, filesharing of the popular CDs also drops. There is a 1:1 correlation between the increases in filesharing and CD price hikes. Whether you believe that filesharing is evil, or good, I don't really care. But if someone else commits a crime, am I guilty as well, merely because I have the same type of electronics in my house?

That might have been true back in the day when CD burners were ridiculously expensive and only people who were planning on using them for something serious owned them, but these days there's a burner, CD or DVD, in every new computer that comes off the racks at Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Conn's, and a million others. You cannot go to Best Buy and buy a computer that has no CD burner without having it custom-designed anymore; yet this is but one of the hundreds of devices that we take for granted every day, and use for a plethora of different reasons, that will be made illegal by the INDUCE Act; not because they ARE being used for piracy, but because they COULD.

Under the INDUCE Act, you are presumed guilty; if you have a device which COULD be used for piracy, you are considered a pirate, whether or not it's ever been used for that purpose. Even if your iPod is filled to the brim wih tunes you bought, for a total of thousands of dollars, at the iTunes store, legally, the fact remains that you are a content pirate, and subject to jail time, because the iPod is a device which MIGHT be used illegitimately.

I am on the "bandwagon" against the INDUCE Act because it pisses me off that the movie and music companies get to freely circumscribe my liberty, criminalize me, confiscate my personal property, hack my computer, and randomly screw up my day, merely because they can afford Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah's (admittedly low) asking price.

Orrin Hatch is willing to, to use a phrase from the old South, "sell us all down the river," into indentured servitude to the media companies, merely to line his pockets. I am not aware of another living human being more worthy of disgust, revulsion and contempt; save maybe those worthies from the great state of Utah who keep electing him.

But more importantly, I am on the bandwagon against the INDUCE Act because I see it as another element in a pervasive attempt to criminalize John and Jane Q. Public. The USA-PATRIOT Act made it legal for the government to assume you are guilty, disregard due process, ignore your rights against unreasonable search and seizure, and reduces us all to the same status as convicted felons - hoping that the next random sweep doesn't pick us up. Every attempt in history to create a police state from within a country, has succeeded.

Every one.

Nearly every police state requires outside help to topple the corrupt forces of the government, and in a day and age when the United States is surrounded by countries that are often police states themselves, and lack either (or both) the resources or inclination to help us if we needed it, I wonder from where our rescuers would appear? No cavalry is on the horizon, folks. If you don't defend your own civil liberties, you will lose them. Our best line of defense against the ongoing circumscription of our civil liberties is our willingness to defy it, and we must never lose sight of that fact.

I love this country, or I would not have served in our Armed Forces; I went to Kosovo to help bring peace to a region which, like Iraq, has known little in recent years, and I came home still in love with this country, but knowing one thing about this country that we should never forget.

Your love of it should never, ever eclipse, not even for one second, your awareness of the potential for abuse of governmental power. Our nation was founded on a refusal to bow before tyranny; and that's a sensation we should never have lost.