Tech groups fight copyright infringement bill

P-to-P vendors disputed Bainwol's testimony and repeated their opposition to the bill. Thursday's testimony should "leave no doubt" that the bill is "the fearsome and flawed product of a perfect policy storm," said Adam Eisgrau, executive director of P2P United.

"An ocean of misinformation about peer-to-peer technology and its developers, whipped into mindless fury by a gale of propaganda, has produced without warning a rogue legislative wave that leaders of America's technology economy have said with one voice will -- not might -- utterly swamp the craft of innovation, if passed," Eisgrau wrote in an e-mail message.

Hatch asked Bainwol if the RIAA would use the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act to sue makers of legitimate products such as MP3 players. Bainwol promised that the RIAA would not.

But Kevin McGuiness, executive director and general counsel of the NetCoalition, an Internet company trade group, said that promise was not enough. "It's a little disconcerting for those of us in the Internet community to sit idly by and watch this legislation go forward based on presumption of good intentions forever on behalf of lawyers for the entertainment community," McGuiness said.

The Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act could harm the progress of the Internet while not stopping unauthorized file trading, McGuiness said. "The Internet is basically one big copying machine," he said.

Andrew Greenberg, vice chairman of the Intellectual Property Committee at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers-USA, also testified against the bill, saying it could discourage tech companies from offering new products.

Even the Business Software Alliance (BSA), with members that have been victims of piracy, asked the committee to consider changes to the bill. Legislation should clarify that multipurpose technology products that can be used for significant legitimate purposes are not subject to lawsuits, and should require that someone being sued is "engaged in conscious, recurring, persistent and deliberate acts" causing others to violate copyright law, said Robert Holleyman, president and chief executive officer of the BSA.

Holleyman urged the committee to come up with legislation that's "properly balanced to avoid unintended consequences."

The bill, despite opposition, has powerful supporters. Among the bill's co-sponsors are Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, and Judiciary Committee ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy from Vermont.

Marybeth Peters, register of copyrights for the U.S. Copyright Office, testified in support of the bill, saying unauthorized file trading online is the largest problem in copyright law today. "Copyright protection need not be merely symbolic in the face of new technology," she said.