A Copyfighter’s Musings

Brad Hill’s take on the MPAA-BitTorrent eal
is basically right, particularly his points at the end about its irrelevance.  While I
agree that this deal is insignificant in terms of stopping
infringement, I suppose it could have some relevance in terms of future litigation
or, at least, future litigation strategy.

For quite awhile, the MPAA/RIAA have been pushing the argument that a
service provider can be secondarily liable if filtering technologies
were available but not implemented.  After Grokster, this can now be evidence that the service provider intended to induce infringement.

In every subsequent case, the MPAA will hold up Bram as a “good actor”
and this deal as evidence that filtering can work.  They will tell
courts that any P2P service that doesn’t act like Bram is a “bad
actor,” and that everyone should be expected to do this sort of
filtering if Bram is willing to do it.

Will a court buy that?  Good question.