| Somewhat balanced It looks like this ruling is at least a little more balanced than the awful Induce Act would have been. If a P2P app maker is advertising their software by saying that you can download the latest chart topping hits for free, when such an action is really illegal, then they should be held accountable. No more promoting illegal activity, while proclaiming ignorance about how illegal activity could possibly have flourished on the network.
On the other hand, the "whether they took easily available steps to reduce infringing uses" part (to quote the Washington Post article) could be tricky. Does that involve name matching? Does that involve a hash signature? Should they allow everything and then allow the RIAA to report abuses which would then be taken down? (Possibly then blocked in the future via a name matching/hash match algorithm.)
I'm sure that the RIAA will wind up claiming that Network X could have used a certain action to reduce piracy while Network X will claim that that action isn't "easily available."
The conspiracy theorist in me imagines the RIAA introducing their own P2P network and licensing their own method to prevent piracy. The method would be available to anyone, but would be pretty pricey. This would drive the freeware operators and other small players out of business (as the only other option would be wait to get sued for infringing uses). The RIAA would then be left with a handful of companies under their thumbs providing P2P services to the public with regular payments landing in the RIAA's pockets.
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-Jason Levine
http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/
http://www.PCQandA.com/
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 tapeloopNot bad at all, really.Premium
join:2004-06-27
Airstrip One
kudos:1 | said by Jason Levine:The conspiracy theorist in me imagines the RIAA introducing their own P2P network and licensing their own method to prevent piracy. The method would be available to anyone, but would be pretty pricey. This would drive the freeware operators and other small players out of business (as the only other option would be wait to get sued for infringing uses). The RIAA would then be left with a handful of companies under their thumbs providing P2P services to the public with regular payments landing in the RIAA's pockets. This would assume that the **AA's are actually open to retooling their business models in order to acheive such an end. Events thus far would not indicate that they would be. 
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Copyright infringement is illegal. Murder is illegal. Therefore, file sharing is murder. |
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