Building Careers and Shaping Public Policy

24 September 2004

The Honorable Orrin Hatch
Chair, Senate Judiciary Committee
104 Hart Building
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Hatch:

I am writing on behalf of IEEE-USA to request that you not mark-up the Inducing of Infringement of Copyright Act (S.2560) without a prior opportunity for public scrutiny of the latest text. We commend the exceedingly fair and open process through which you and Ranking Member Leahy have examined and discussed this important issue thus far, and we strongly encourage you to continue in this manner by allowing the public to review and comment on any new version of the bill before it is marked up in the committee.

IEEE-USA was honored to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on this issue and to be a part of the ongoing dialogue among interested stakeholders and you and your staffs. IEEE-USA does support the concept of inducement of infringement of copyrighted material as long it maintains the well established balance between proper incentives for copyright owners and protecting technological innovations from undue regulation. We are concerned, however, that the first version of S.2560 and both subsequent versions produced by the Copyright Office do not maintain this balance, and have departed from the standards established by the Supreme Court in Sony Corp. v. Universal Studios. As we testified on July 22nd, we believe that it should not be an indirect infringement of a copyright to manufacture, distribute, or provide a hardware or software product or process capable of substantial non-infringing use, unless the manufacturer, distributor or maker actively induces the infringement of a copyrighted work by another.

Again, we sincerely appreciate the opportunity to work with you and your staffs and we look forward to continuing to work with you all interested parties to try to come to a consensus on this admittedly difficult and complex issue. However, we again urge you to allow ample time and opportunity for the public to review the new legislation and provide comments before you take final committee action.

IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of the IEEE. It was created in 1973 to advance the public good and promote the careers and public-policy interests of the more than 225,000 technology professionals who are U.S. members of the IEEE. The IEEE is the world's largest technical professional society. For more information, go to http://www.ieeeusa.org. If you have any questions, please contact Bill Williams
at 202-785-0017 x 8331.
 

Sincerely,

John W. Steadman, Ph.D., P.E.
2004 IEEE-USA President