Kaltes
Premium
join:2002-12-04
Los Angeles, CA
2 edits | said by GOLFnSUN  :And are you that legal expert?? I am an IP attorney. I am by no means the last word on this subject, but I am waiting for the opinions of lawyers who are familiar with IP law to see where they come down in their analysis. I haven't finished reading the opinion. It is hard for me to read much of it without rolling my eyes and moving on to something else. I am going to have to force myself through it, of course, because I will need to know this case well for work, but I am very disappointed in the analysis thus far. When compared to the outstanding analysis in the trial court case, this just goes to show how the supreme court will radically alter the law merely to reach the result they want to reach in a particular case.
No one can dispute that Grokster is an enterprise founded on impropriety. The problem was, how do you punish them without also putting innovation itself in peril? You can't. You have to cause collateral damage if you want to nail Grokster.
My tentative:
It looks like the USSC went ahead with a annoyingly-ambiguous rule which replaced a clear, powerful rule handed down in the betamax case. The practical effect of this will be that EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN ALLEGEDLY INFRINGING TECHNOLOGICAL DEVICE MANUFACTURER OR SOFTWARE PROGRAMMER, will be hauled into court and hammered for years potentially by RIAA/MPAA cartel lawyers. This allows the copyright monopolists to squash innovation with litigation, EXACTLY what the pro-innovation types were afraid of. Getting bankrupted fighting off lawsuits that allege you were out to infringe all along, and spawning endless rigged and manipulated 'polls' and 'studies' that purport to prove that such and such device is primarily used for infringement.
I have little hope that my final conclusion will turn out any cheerier given the language I have read thus far.
edit: finished reading the case. it is as bad as I thought. clear rules established both in Sony and many other cases in regard to contributory infringement have been SKEWERED, and replaced with a strange, moronic rule that focuses on the INTENT of the defendant. Theoretically, as long as you hide your evil intentions well, never mentioning your love of infringement in internal memos, marketing, etc, you could get away with it. Of course regardless of intent, you WOULD BE SUED and hammered in court until you proved, probably after a trial, that you have no 'unlawful objective'. This is so ludicrously fact-sensitive that it allows the RIAA/MPAA to haul almosy anyone into court and subject them to a lengthy, expensive process, which would EASILY destroy any new upstart innovator. This is exactly what the betamax opinion tried to prevent. We have already had printer companies (lexmark) try to use the DMCA to hold a monopoly on ink cartridges, and that was before this case! Now there is the potential for things to get much worse.
The only silver lining is that IP lawyers are going to get a lot more work, so I will probably benefit financially from this ruling.  |
