A Copyfighter’s Musings

See here.  Summary:

“Consumers have two strong interests: (1) Avoiding inhibitions on technological progress; and (2) Fostering the production of content by providing incentives to creators…. The Ninth Circuit focused totally on the need to avoid any inhibition on technology, and in so doing it lost sight of the equally important consumer interest in promoting content….

Also, the Ninth Circuit was mistaken in its application of the “capable of substantial non-infringing uses” language from Sony. No one in this case argues that P2P as a technology should be banned. The issue, rather, is the business practices which the filesharing companies are wrapping around this technology. These can and should be the subject of judicial inquiry, and condemned when they create business models that can fairly be classified as deliberately dependent on infringement.

Finally, this Court has been urged to defer to Congress. This is bad advice, because it assumes that Sony was rightly applied below. Also, the present situation needs cautious, common law approaches, not sweeping efforts to solve poorly-understood problems at one hack. Congress will benefit greatly if this Court gives it some breathing space.”

Filed by Derek Slater at 4:41 pm under General news
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