{"id":446,"date":"2004-06-18T16:52:39","date_gmt":"2004-06-18T20:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/benadida\/2004\/06\/18\/the-end-of-innovation\/"},"modified":"2004-06-18T16:52:39","modified_gmt":"2004-06-18T20:52:39","slug":"the-end-of-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/2004\/06\/18\/the-end-of-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"The End Of Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a109'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Senator Hatch is about to unleash <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/archives\/001631.php\">a new bill<\/a> that would make criminals out of those who &#8220;induce&#8221; copyright violations. So, if you build any tool that could be used to violate copyright, you&#8217;re liable. A computer that can copy songs? Illegal. A VCR that can record a movie? Illegal. A photocopier that can photocopy a book? Illegal.<\/p>\n<p>Why? Because if your photocopier can photocopy a book, then it can also photocopy child pornography. And photocopying child pornography, well that might help spread child pornography! So if there&#8217;s a technology, any technology, that can copy things, it must be stopped! Think of the children! Stop downloading those songs, you&#8217;re hurting the children!<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s clear the people behind this bill are the movie and record industries. They want to stop &#8220;piracy&#8221; at all costs. The interesting question is whether anyone actually believes that file sharing = child porn. And whether stopping file sharing will actually curb child pornography. Anyone? Senator Hatch? <\/p>\n<p>The only sure thing is this: innovation and technology leadership originate with the freedom to build and invent new tools. All tools have potentially criminal uses. Outlaw a tool because it might be used for copyright violation, and you&#8217;re effectively outlawing all tools. I cannot imagine a better way to shoot ourselves in the foot and put an end to innovation more quickly than by enacting this bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senator Hatch is about to unleash a new bill that would make criminals out of those who &#8220;induce&#8221; copyright violations. So, if you build any tool that could be used to violate copyright, you&#8217;re liable. A computer that can copy songs? Illegal. A VCR that can record a movie? Illegal. A photocopier that can photocopy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":93,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-policy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/93"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ben\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}