Keeping a jaundiced eye on the corporate media.
SCOTUS says file-sharing services can be sued.
Which, logically speaking, means copy machine manufacturers can be sued, since they are so often blatantly used to make copies of copyrighted material.
But then, logic had nothing to do with this decision. Big business did.
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I am repeating a post here that I wrote for another message board:
— snip —
As pointed out before, copyright infringement isn’t “stealing”, simply because the other guy still has his first copy. It is copyright infringement.
Copyright isn’t a natural human right, it is a fairly recent invention (few hundred years ago), and it is more of a contract between an artist and society.
Society promises the artist to enforce copyright protection on his works for a limited time, and in exchange his works will fall into the public domain after that period expires.
So the artist can enjoy income from his work for a few years, and after that he/she will have to create some new art to keep the money coming in. The public gets his/her creations after that period, the artist has active interest in creating new original works, and everybody wins.
The record companies have silently broken this contract with society. Through lobbying, brainwashing and propaganda they make everybody believe that it is their godgiven right to profit from copyright into eternity.
It is not. The only reason for the existence of copyright is the benefit for the PUBLIC, not the individual, not the company.
When you hear about the DMCA, the Sonny Bono copyright act, the recent supreme court decision etc., there is this nagging feeling that _something_ isn’t right about it, but you can’t put your finger on it. Well, if you go back to the source of the idea of “copyright” you will discover why.
With the original idea of copyright terms, Elvis Presley or The Beatles or the first Walt Disney movies would have long fallen into the public domain, for everybody to enjoy. The record and movie companies have certainly profited sufficiently from those works already.
They also continously take works that already are in the public domain to steal ideas from (e.g. Treasure island, Count of Monte Christo, Little Mermaid, War of the Worlds etc.). And I am not even talking here about the quality or originality of recent movies/music.
Also, as an added bonus, the recent decisions continue the trend of making everybody a criminal. You cannot live a normal live without breaking some laws, so there will always be a reason to arrest or intimidate you should the need arise.
Doesn’t the ruling apply just to those programs whose sole purpose is to break the copyright laws?
“SCOTUS says file-sharing services can be sued.”
And how is that bad?
The SCOTUS
“SCOTUS says file-sharing services can be sued.”
And how is that wrong?
The SCOTUS simply ruled that “One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright … is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device’s lawful uses.”
The key word here is “promote.”
Copy machine manufacturers have nothing to worry about unless they are promoting its [the copy machine's] use to infringe copyright.
A copy machine can be used to copy many things that are not “copyrighted” just as a P2P program can be used to share things that are not copyrighted. What it comes down to is whether the creator/distributor of said product (”device”) is promoting its use to infringe copyrights.
So basically, what the SCOTUS ruled is that the promotion is illegal, not the distribution of the device.