Ernest Miller has all over this story (LawMeme has a good index to the work he's done). They actually ended up holding hearings, when they were originally going to try to slide it through without any, so I guess there's some small hope.
What really gets me about it, though, is that it is NOT just Orrin Hatch. Other co-sponsors of the bill: Tom Daschle, Patrick Leahy, Barbara Boxer.
Uh, go team? Geez.
http://dailykos.com/comments/2004/7/9/11835/15672/25#25
And adapted from another dkos post:
The INDUCE bill is worse than Clinton's 1996 telecom bill that signed the broadcast media over to the Republicans. I'll even say it's worse than the PATRIOT Act and the Iraq war put together. The immediate effect won't be worse, of course, but the difference is there's nowhere near as much money with a vested interest in keeping the PATRIOT Act or the Iraq War going forever. So those things are mere politics and will change with as the political climate changes.
The INDUCE Act is different in that it amounts to a massive privatization of what's up til now been civil rights. It turns control over public communication, and even control over the technology that makes public communication possible, over to corporations, who will then spend whatever it takes to defend that control. If it passes, will never be undone (unless the courts throw it out rather quickly, which is unlikely). See Jessica Litman, Digital Copyright for how it's always been like that.
Getting rid of (e.g.) racial segregation through the civil rights movement was possible because while there was some cultural resistance from rednecks, there weren't any powerful financial interests profiting from keeping segregation in place. Getting rid of the INDUCE Act will be more like getting rid of slavery, which did run up against powerful interests, and which took a civil war that killed more Americans than WW1 and WW2 put together.
--clyde
