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P2P GROUPS DENOUNCE LACK OF REPRESENTATION AT COPYRIGHT WITNESS TABLE

P2P leaders are complaining they weren’t invited to testify on a Senate bill that could hold P2P software providers liable for copyright infringement by the software’s users and, critics say, also could undermine the Sony Betamax fair-use decision. The Senate Judiciary Committee last Thurs. held a hearing on S- 2560, a bill by committee Chmn. Hatch (R-Utah) and ranking Democrat Leahy (Vt.); the P2P industry had pressed vocally for a hearing ever since the bill was introduced. Despite the lack of a P2P witness, only one of the 5 witnesses endorsed the bill as written.

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Most of the focus of the P2P community has been on Hatch, not his co-sponsor Leahy, who was more vocal in defending the bill at the hearing than was the chairman. (Leahy engaged in a particularly thorny debate with CEA Pres. Gary Shapiro, a vehement opponent of the bill.) Neglecting to mention Leahy, who participated in scheduling the witnesses, StreamCast Networks (Morpheus) CEO Michael Weiss in a statement said “I urge Senator Hatch, if he is serious in asking for help from the technology sector in drafting crucial legislation, to invite P2P software developers like Morpheus, and/or the trade association it is a co-founding member of, P2P United, to the table with an eye toward suggesting alternative language or solutions to [S-2560].”

Both Hatch and Leahy urged interested parties to contact them over the Aug. recess with suggestions for the bill, as they hope to move it in Sept.; Leahy said he would be monitoring his e-mail from his Vt. farm house. Neither said P2P companies weren’t welcome to comment. But Distributed Computing Industry Assn. (DCIA) Pres. Marty Lafferty wrote to Assn. members that no P2P member “was allowed” to testify, despite floor remarks and other comments that suggested the bill was targeted at P2P networks.

Hatch said at the opening of the hearing that the bill wasn’t aimed specifically at P2P -- although he discussed P2P at length when introducing the bill, citing the Grokster case as the reason for its existence -- but Hatch did display a poster showing a quote by Sharman Networks CEO Nikki Hemming stating that her company was developing technology to help users avoid dummy files and other measures taken by the recording industry to deter unauthorized file-sharing. Lafferty said the poster’s quote was “falsely attributing an inflammatory remark” to DCIA founder Hemming and Sharman, “which in fact has worked tirelessly to combat copyright infringement as well as continually improve the quality and value of its software user experience since acquiring Kazaa.” He said the committee’s legal counsel had been contacted to have them correct the hearing record.

Weiss said Congress is “turning a deaf ear towards learning the truth and hearing all sides of the story,” and is basing legislation “upon the lies being perpetrated by the entertainment industry lobbyists.” He said Hatch’s floor statement introducing the bill was “littered with inaccurate and misleading statements about legitimate P2P software providers such as Morpheus,” but didn’t say what those misstatements were.

While there were no P2P witnesses at the hearing, 4 of the 5 witnesses invited by S-2560 sponsors Hatch and Leahy were at least somewhat critical of the bill. RIAA Chmn. Mitch Bainwol was fully supportive, but Business Software Alliance (BSA) Pres. Robert Holleyman cautioned that a new law wasn’t necessarily the best approach, and if a bill was deemed necessary it should preserve the Sony Betamax decision, target only egregious bad actors and deter frivolous suits. IEEE-USA Vice Chmn.- Intellectual Property Committee Andrew Greenberg offered substitute language, saying S-2560 went too far in undermining fair use rights. Two witnesses -- Shapiro and NetCoalition Exec. Dir. Kevin McGuiness -- found almost nothing nice to say about the bill. Shapiro said it would destroy innovation in high-tech, while McGuiness said it could undermine the entire architecture of the Internet.

While no P2P witness testified, the committee has heard twice this Congress from a P2P executive. Sharman Networks Exec. Vp Alan Morris has testified twice, once in a hearing titled “Pornography, Technology & Process: Problems and Solutions on Peer-to-Peer Networks,” and again at a hearing titled “The Dark Side of a Bright Idea: Could Personal and National Security Risks Compromise the Potential of P2P File-Sharing Networks?”