Ian Clarke: UK govt should scoop up INDUCE Act refugees

By Cory Doctorow at 11:33 pm Monday, Sep 27

Ian Clarke, the creator of the P2P Freenet system (an anonymizing, attack-resistant system designed to let dissidents speak without fear of retaliation) has written a letter to the UK Home Secretary. Ian urges the British government to make arrangements to accomodate the flood of INDUCE Act refugees that will wash up on Britain's shores if the US enacts the terrible law, which would make it a crime to produce technology that "induces" copyright infringement (e.g., selling an iPod with the capacity to store more songs than most customers have in their libraries).

Clarke himself left the US in the wake of the PATRIOT Act (as did I), realizing that the US had created a system of law that routinely fingerprinted and photographed visa'ed immigrants, and subjected us to secret arrest without counsel or charge, said arrests possibly leading to indefinite detention.

My question is whether the UK government has made sufficient provision for displaced American innovators to migrate here given the hostile environment they may soon face in their own country. It is my belief that the United Kingdom can only benefit from the influx of talented software engineers from the United States, and should minimise any barriers to their migration here.

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