Orrin Hatch criminalizes the iPod

Posted by MacDood
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I'll never tell
With Orrin Hatch's nation-destroying Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act headed for law, EFF has decided to create a real example of just what kind of "piracy" Hatch is targetting. Here's EFF's hypothetical complaint against Apple (for making the iPod) C|Net (for reviewing the iPod), and Toshiba (for supplying hard drives for iPods). All three of these activities fall within the scope of activity that Hatch's bill seeks to end:

As detailed further in Professor Expert’s report, the iPod would have been much less attractive to consumers had it been incompatible with the music files downloaded from P2P networks and had it not allowed consumer-to-consumer transfers. Professor Expert’s report also makes it clear that the iPod, in turn, enhanced the attractiveness of P2P networks by offering iPod owners expansive storage capability and lightning-fast data transfer, allowing them to listen to any number of infringing music files when away from the computer.

Surveys conducted by Professor Expert establish that a majority of iPod owners have used at least some significant portion of their iPods to store and play infringing music files, whether derived from P2P networks or promiscuous hand-to-hand copying. Upon information and belief, Apple was certainly aware of this fact from its own internal marketing research.

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(Thanks, Jason (and good work!)) [Boing Boing]