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Tech firms rally against copyright bill

Foes of the Induce Act say it would "tie up innovators and chill investment."

Headshot of Declan McCullagh
Headshot of Declan McCullagh
Declan McCullagh Former Senior Writer
Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. You can e-mail him or follow him on Twitter as declanm. Declan previously was a reporter for Time and the Washington bureau chief for Wired and wrote the Taking Liberties section and Other People's Money column for CBS News' Web site.
Declan McCullagh
Foes of a in the Senate are stepping up their opposition before an expected committee vote Thursday. More than 40 technology companies and trade associations warned sponsors of the so-called Induce Act that even the latest version remains unacceptable and would engender "an unmanageable flood of litigation that would tie up innovators and chill investment."

The long list of groups includes CNET Networks, publisher of News.com, BellSouth, Earthlink, Google, MCI, MySQL, RadioShack, Panasonic, Red Hat, SBC Communications, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Uniden, Verizon Communications and Yahoo. The Induce Act enjoys strong support from the entertainment industry, which claims it will target file-swapping networks with minimal collateral damage.