Weekly Edition
Return to the Press page
| |||||||||||||
Supreme Court rules against file swapping (ZDNet)
ZDNet
looks at
a ruling by the US Supreme Court against companies involved in
file-trading.
"In a unanimous decision, the justices ruled companies that build businesses with the active intent of encouraging copyright infringement should be held liable for their customers' illegal actions.
"We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement," Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion."
(Log in to post comments)
"as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken ..." Posted Jun 27, 2005 18:31 UTC (Mon) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] "Clear expression" would have been a good definition; a court could probably not justify to let someone off who clearly confirmed their intentional, material support for breaking the law.
"... or other affirmative steps taken ..." - whew - that's SO badly defined! What is, pray tell, an affirmative step? Participating in Bittorrent? If only they had written a clearer definition here, this inconclusive statement leaves far too much room for debate. Those five words are going to generate a lot of worthless & hypocritical printed paper in many lower courts, from either side ...
"as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken ..." Posted Jun 27, 2005 18:59 UTC (Mon) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link] Don't just read the ZDNet article; the ruling itself contains fairly extensive discussion of what those other affirmative steps might be. [Mind you, they still aren't that clear, but it's a lot more clear than that statement.] A ton of links, inc. bittorrent of the ruling itself, in my blog post. (IANAL, as the post says.)
"as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken ..." Posted Jun 27, 2005 20:19 UTC (Mon) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link] Thanks for the quick and accurate clarifications. [In addition to these really useful links, here's hoping that Jon Corbet is already working at one of his usual high-quality assessments on the same topic ;-) ]
"as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken ..." Posted Jun 27, 2005 19:38 UTC (Mon) by yokem_55 (subscriber, #10498) [Link] Some clafification might be that this statement would exclude the absence of actions so long as there is no evidence that the absence was willfully negligent. In one of the footnotes to the ruling, there is a statement to the effect that, in the absence of any evidence regarding the intent of the distrubutor of the tech in question, Sony still applies.Is this all doom and gloom for innovators? Not necessarily. It will be interesting to see how the first lawsuits based on this ruling(and this ruling is ambiguous enough that they will come) play out. My rough guess is that tech makers will have to conduct some due dilligence in the marketing of thier new technologies and how they impliment thier business models. The people who now hoav the best defence against getting nailed on this are those that are developing technologies and don't have a business/profit model associated with it. Specifically, non-commercial open source developers creating the tech for its own sake, irrespective of how it ends up getting used. Some basic (even if ineffective) filters might end up having to be utilized in order to demonstrate some concern for due dilligence...
"as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken ..." Posted Jun 28, 2005 14:07 UTC (Tue) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] I think what is clear is that the SCOTUS didn't want to give a free-pass to every technology just because there are legitimate uses. As with murder and manslaughter, the effect is the same, it's the *intent* that's relevant. Ofcourse, people might have assumed they had a free-pass since Sony-Betamax but TANSTAAFL.
How do you determine intent? The same way as in murder trials, by looking at the evidence on a case-by-case basis. It is not the supreme court's job to define the rules, that's the legislature's job. The supreme court rules on fuzziness in issues presented to it.
Anyway, the lower courts will now go back to the evidence presented and decide whether *this case* falls under the guidelines suggested.
If you want clear rules, you need to be knocking on legislatures door. The legal system can only (by definition) decide on individual cases.
This is however an interesting distinction between civil and common law systems. In civil law (ie mainland europe) it is considered the role of the legislature fix found problems in the system. In common law (ie the US) it is the court's problem to patch what the legislature broke.
As an aside, one interesting idea would be for people or organisations to PGP sign lists of checksums of files they consider free to distribute. Then you could fire up your P2P client and tell it to only list stuff considered by that party to be free. Ofcourse, this could also be used by hacker X to sign files he ripped saying that he offered a certain quality. I think the fact that at the moment there is no way to only list free files could be a liability. A scheme like this would allow people to market "legitimate download only" clients using the gnutella network. Good idea, no?
"No DRM" == "foster infridgement"? Posted Jun 27, 2005 19:59 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] I'm afraid that advertizing a device as having no DRM could soon be classified as "clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement".
Good news for Creative Commons? Posted Jun 27, 2005 20:33 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] Device manufacturers could deal with this by going whole hog Evil DRM -- or they could actively promote non-infringing ways to get content. Throwing some money at CC-friendly artists would be cheaper and less user-hostile than the DRM alternative.I'm sure most CC-friendly bands would come up with a reasonable deal to pre-fill devices with an eclectic selection of music. Magnatune and Hana Micron, a Samsung spinoff, are already doing this. This may be remembered as the day the record industry failed to learn the proprietary software industry's rule that a "pirate" copy is not as good for the company as a sale, but better than a legal copy of a free alternative.
Magnatune: "We're not evil" Posted Jun 28, 2005 3:45 UTC (Tue) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link] A Google of the free music world?Cool.
Supreme Court rules against file swapping (ZDNet) Posted Jun 27, 2005 23:57 UTC (Mon) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] I had a lawyer tell me that reading a web page is copyright infringement. Now, if that is so, all the browser maker/distributors may need to watch out.
Also, those browsers with File/Send Page and File/Save As may need to rethink those options.
And, come to think of it, what about Forward in all of those email clients? If I send you an email (assume there is a funny joke in it), are you gonna check with me before hitting forward? If not, that really is copyright infringement now isn't it?
Is this a bigger can of worms than anyone imagines? I imagine the ruling sould be legally astute, any ideas as to how technically astute it is?
all the best,
drew
Supreme Court rules against file swapping (ZDNet) Posted Jun 29, 2005 1:17 UTC (Wed) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link] Reading something is not copyright infringement.
Your friend is either joking or an idiot.
Copyright has to do with who has the RIGHT to COPY something. A human
Perhaps he was making the assertion that the available ways of READING a web page seem to all involve COPYING it across a network, into some computer's memory, and mostly (with most browswers) into some cache somewhere, not to mention into the video RAM of the system. In some truly distorted view
Anything posted to the public internet's "world wide web" is clearly being
The interesting points of contention have to do with redistribution of
For instance if I copy LWN's contentusing a wget mirroring script and
Feh!
JimD
Supreme Court rules against file swapping (ZDNet) Posted Jun 29, 2005 22:53 UTC (Wed) by ronaldcole (guest, #1462) [Link] Reading something with a browser probably is since it made a copy of the document on your hard drive in it's cache.
Copyright did not anticipate the digital age Posted Jun 30, 2005 4:56 UTC (Thu) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] > Reading something is not copyright infringement.> Your friend is either joking or an idiot.
Sadly, many legislative and judicial decisions, in the US and elsewhere, foster the idea that reading something on a computer *is* invoking copyright, and is thus copyright infringement if done without license. The bits are copied from a storage medium into the computer's memory, thus copyright is invoked -- so the logic goes.
Supreme Court rules against file swapping (ZDNet) Posted Jun 28, 2005 6:54 UTC (Tue) by freddyh (subscriber, #21133) [Link] Hmm, I read this as: "he who sells guns is liable for the resulting acts: threatening, killing, ..."
Taking this further, if I am involved in a car accident I should ofcourse be able to sue the person who built my car, as he is liable for the resulting act of me getting an accident.
Funny how some people seem to have stopped thinking.
FreddyH
Supreme Court rules against file swapping (ZDNet) Posted Jun 28, 2005 11:32 UTC (Tue) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] Especially if the car company advertised that car as being fast and powerful and the accident involved you speeding right? Or even better, the other person.
all the best,
drew
Supreme Court rules against file swapping (ZDNet) Posted Jun 28, 2005 14:58 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] Sure, if the gun is advertised as "excellent for killing your boss!" Or the car is "built for tearing up mountain roads at no less than 90 MPH!" It's not illegal to build something that *could* be used for breaking the law, it's illegal to advertise it as *good* for breaking the law.
Supreme Court rules against file swapping (ZDNet) Posted Jun 28, 2005 15:39 UTC (Tue) by freddyh (subscriber, #21133) [Link] Ah, but I do not recall seeing any advertisement from napster, kazaa, etc stating: "this is great for sharing files that are not yours!":)
Supreme Court rules against file swapping (ZDNet) Posted Jun 28, 2005 7:37 UTC (Tue) by petegn (guest, #847) [Link] It is high time the US High court and in fact the US it's self became a little more IRRELEVENT that is to say they shut the **** up for a while and quit trying to run everyones life the world over , Just dissapear up Redmmonds ass and go play in the traffic . US courtsd this US courts that US courts frell you !
Supreme Court rules against file swapping (ZDNet) Posted Jun 28, 2005 21:50 UTC (Tue) by ronaldcole (guest, #1462) [Link] This is more of the "hate crime" new-think from the SCOTUS... the thing or act isn't the problem, it's your INTENT. What's worse is that instead of INTENT delineating degrees of evilness of an act or thing, it now delineates the goodness or badness of the act or thing!!
I fully embrace the "Internet as VCR" paradigm as far as downloading TV shows. The broadcast license fees have been paid... exactly how many copies are authorized? ANYONE and EVERYONE with a recording device can record OTA television for timeshifting and keeping... so which of those recordings, exactly, are not-authorized and therefore illegal? And if they're all legal copies, then why can't I give away my legal copies over a P2P network? How about if I have ten virtual recording devices? How about ten thousand? How about a trillion?
|
|||||||||||||