{"id":6539,"date":"2004-08-19T13:16:24","date_gmt":"2004-08-19T20:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/08\/19\/tools-not-sins.html"},"modified":"2004-08-19T13:16:24","modified_gmt":"2004-08-19T20:16:24","slug":"tools_not_sins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/08\/19\/tools_not_sins.html","title":{"rendered":"Tools, not sins"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won the Grokster case<\/a> before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling establishes that if you develop a highly decentralized (and, thus, unmonitered from a central location) P2P system, you can’t be held liable if folks do stuff that copyright owners don’t like. The copyright violators can get in trouble, but you can’t. It’s the same principle (and was argued as such) as the famous Supreme Court Betamax case, which held that just because folks will use VCRs in a way that violates copyrights doesn’t mean that copyright holders can go after the VCR manufacturers for damages (or block their manufacture).<\/p>\n

From the closing argument:<\/p>\n

The Copyright Owners urge a re-examination of the law in the light of what they believe to be proper public policy, expanding exponentially the reach of the doctrines of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. Not only would such a renovation conflict with binding precedent, it would be unwise. Doubtless, taking that step would satisfy the Copyright Owners’ immediate economic aims. However, it would also alter general copyright law in profound ways with unknown ultimate consequences outside the present context.
\n[…] The introduction of new technology is always disruptive to old markets, and particularly to those copyright owners whose works are sold through well established distribution mechanisms. Yet, history has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine, or an MP3 player.Thus, it is prudent for courts to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent present magnitude.<\/p>\n

The decision is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(via BoingBoing<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has won the Grokster case before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling establishes that if you develop a highly decentralized (and, thus, unmonitered…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,28,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hi-tech","category-media-moguls","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6449,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/09\/01\/this_garage_doo.html","url_meta":{"origin":6539,"position":0},"title":"This garage door opener was made for you and me …","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 1-Sep-04 6:39am","format":false,"excerpt":"A garage door opener company named Chamberlain sued another company, Skylink, for making generic garage door openers that were backwards-compatible with the \"copyrighted\" garage door opener microcode. The court seems...","rel":"","context":"In "Politics & Law"","block_context":{"text":"Politics & Law","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/politics-law"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11359,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/09\/13\/law_suit_over_shrink_wrap.html","url_meta":{"origin":6539,"position":1},"title":"Law suit over shrink-wrap licensing","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 13-Sep-07 10:31am","format":false,"excerpt":"Most folks don't realize that most of the software you buy ... you aren't really buying.\u00a0 You're licensing it.\u00a0 Yeah, sure, you have the disks and the manuals and all,...","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25516,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/18\/my-consolidated-nattering-on-sopa-and-pipa.html","url_meta":{"origin":6539,"position":2},"title":"My consolidated nattering on SOPA and PIPA","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 18-Jan-12 9:43am","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are my thoughts on\u00a0SOPA and PIPA, consolidating about a dozen other posts I could have written today. Copyright is a cool thing. Creators should have their creations protected. They should also be able to profit by selling their rights to something to a third party, who should then be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/stop_SOPA.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3177,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/07\/28\/hacking_at_our.html","url_meta":{"origin":6539,"position":3},"title":"Hacking at our freedom","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 28-Jul-02 12:45pm","format":false,"excerpt":"I believe in copyright. I believe in respecting the rights of a producer of a creative work, and am willing to extend that to the people whom that producer sells...","rel":"","context":"In "Disney\/Pixar"","block_context":{"text":"Disney\/Pixar","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/disney"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":137499,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/12\/28\/a-long-awaited-copyright-thaw-begins-on-new-years-day.html","url_meta":{"origin":6539,"position":4},"title":"A long-awaited copyright thaw begins on New Years Day","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 28-Dec-18 10:29am","format":false,"excerpt":"After the last Disney-sponsored throttling of creative works passing from copyright status in the US to the public domain, we've had a freeze on such things, with anything published after 1922 being still deemed under copyright, with all the restrictions for use and re-use that carries. That happened in 1998,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":26495,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/02\/17\/some-surprisingly-good-news-from-the-eu.html","url_meta":{"origin":6539,"position":5},"title":"Some surprisingly good news from the EU","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 17-Feb-12 10:43pm","format":false,"excerpt":"If intermediaries, hosts, ISPs, websites, etc., can be dragooned through law suits to filter out anything that might possibly be copyright infringement, the Internet as we know it is toast. Bravo to the EU Court of Justice on this. #ddtbReshared post from +Electronic Frontier FoundationThis EU Court of Justice ruling\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}