A Copyfighter’s Musings

Patrick Ross posted a follow-up to my post below. 
I think, in some sense, Patrick is absolutely right – this case is not
about P2P. It is ultimately about the secondary liability standards by
which we will judge all technologies.  It is about the
far-reaching consequences of the so-called “bad actor” or, perhaps more
accurately, bad-business-model standard that Ross advocates, as well as
the many other offered alternatives to Sony.  To many
artists who see the Internet and digital technologies as opening up
myriad beneficial distribution channels, the threat such standards
pose is grave. Counter to Ross’ claim, artists will indeed “lose
… valuable distribution outlet[s].”

As I suggested below,
this point holds even if you think P2P will still exist if respondents
are held liable.  On that point, I’m not sure either – in
particular, I highly doubt that decentralized P2P will be allowed to
exist under the forced redesign standards suggested by numerous
parties.  As suggested in the petitioners’ amici, filters will
require at least some form of centralization.

Regarding Ross’ proposed standard, I highly recommend reading Intel’s argument (18-19) against the SG’s standard. 
As an aside: it’s also worth noting that, given how Ross sets up the
standard, it will not reduce piracy in the least, as any amateur,
non-commercial P2P distributor will be allowed to exist. Of course,
Ross proposal could still, as a legal matter, be a principled
view of what the standard should be, but it’s worth realizing that it
will probably not produce the beneficial policy consequences that
those who push for reversal are hoping for.  In this way, too,
this case has little to do with P2P – P2P and the infringements it enables will likely keep rolling along just fine.

Filed by Derek Slater at 4:00 pm under Big Ideas
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