Siva Vaidhyanathan is blogging today @ Eric Alterman's Altercation, and delivers a welcome call-to-arms to readers to join EFF in fighting the Induce Act:

If you are not familiar with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, you should be. This cyber-rights organization is working hard to keep freedom and information flowing over this very medium that you are enjoying right now. The EFF has scored two major victories in the past few months.

First, EFF lawyers liberated Woody Guthrie's song "This Land is Your Land" by showing the publishing company that controls its rights that the song is actually based on multiple works in the public domain, and itself entered the public domain since the early 1970s.

Then last week it took down Diebold, the incompetent electronic voting machine company that had tried stop students and journalists who dared to criticize the company by accusing them of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Now EFF is trying to stop a stupid bill making its way through the US Senate. It's called the Induce Act, and it could potentially threaten innovation within industries that produce goods that COULD be used to facilitate copyright infringement: your photocopy machine, fax machine, personal computer, and the iPod.