From Consumer Electronics Daily:

If the proposed federal Induce Act became law and had the chilling effect on the high-tech industry that opponents fear, that wouldn't be a bad result, U. of Utah computing Prof. Lee Hollaar told a Palo Alto forum Thurs. At the event, sponsored by the Cato Institute and the Economist magazine, Hollaar said, "Sometimes chilling -- making technologists look at the consequences of their work -- may not be such a bad idea." He told the meeting that fears about the act -- intended to reverse the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals Grokster opinion finding decentralized P2P networks not secondarily liable for copyright infringement of shared music -- result from an unrealistic worst-case reading of its terms. By the same reasoning, "everyone" would be a felon under existing felony law, he said. Defining by statute inducement of copyright infringement also would have the benefit to developers of setting the limits on who can be liable, Hollaar said. Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Fred von Lohmann responded that the breadth of existing copyright law was "a bug not a feature." The law "should be dialed back so the average person on the street is not a criminal suspect." Besides, federal prosecutors are much more apt to go after a technology company than they are an ordinary file sharer, he said. And having the govt. force developers to take into account incumbents' interests is "an incredibly dangerous thing to do," von Lohmann said. He compared it to a mandate to the fledgling auto industry not to "upset the railroad industry too much."

This fight is directly about chilling innovation, about preventing innovators and creators from innovating and creating. Hollaar said as much. Where he's wrong is in saying that making technologists look at the consequences of their work is the goal - the goal is to make lawyers from well-capitalized industries look at how technology threatens existing business models and figuring out how to stop progress to protect them.