Under much protest from technology companies and internet providers, Senator Orrin Hatch intends to move ahead with the controversial Induce Act. The Induce Act, would make “whoever intentionally induces any violation” of copyright law legally liable for those violations.
Ostensibly a way to outlaw P2P Networks and designed to overturn an April 2003 ruling that said Morpheus and Grokster were not liable for copyright infringements that took place using their software, the Induce Act has been widely criticized as having the potential to “make hardware makers like Apple and Toshiba–and even journalists–liable for products and reviews that could “induce” the public to violate copyright law.”
During Senate hearings regarding the Induce Act, Marybeth Peters, the head of the US Copyright Office, has taken radical copyright maximalism to a new level by not only supporting the Induce Act, but going so far as to say that the Induce Act wasn’t enough and that Congress should overturn the Betamax decision (which made VCR’s legal).