Cal Induce Goes From Bad To Ridiculous

from the this-serves-what-purpose-now? dept

While the federal Induce Act bill has gone away for the time being, that isn't stopping state politicians from trying to enact their own innovation-killing laws that blame technology, rather than users, for the misuse of technology. Ed Felten is picking apart the latest version of one such proposed bill in California, nicknamed Cal Induce. The bill's latest revision has some odd requirements, and basically insists that any P2P application include filters. Felten picks apart the bill piece by piece to show why it makes no sense in places and is unlikely to do anything useful in others: "The bill apparently requires anyone who advertises or distributes P2P software to incorporate filters into it. This seems a bit odd; normally advertisers and distributors don't control the design of the products they advertise. Typically, third party advertisers and distributors aren't allowed to inspect a software product's design." Yet another backwards piece of legislation that seems to be based on the theory that pretending to protect obsolete business models is more important than reality.

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