Your Rights.
The last week has seen a torrent of invasions on the rights of Americans, all handed down by SCOTUS. Tsykoduk made a wonderful comment to that end on Justus For All” “It’s been a bad week for freedoms.”
And boy is he right. Here’s a brief round-up.
The rights of homeowners have just become moot. Rather than being able to be safe and secure in our homes, our local governments now have the right to take our homes and give them to private corporations.
The Sony betamax ruling which held that devices that had the potential to be used for piracy could be legally manufactured, providing there were legitimate uses for the device, has been overturned by SCOTUS.
That’s right ladies and gentlemen, your VCRs, and DVDRs have just become illegal, unless you can clearly prove an abundance of legitimate uses for your device and show that you had no idea that the device in question could be used for piracy. Hell, we may as well sue Al Gore for inventing the Information Super-Highway, because he had to have known that it could be used for piracy.
While we’re at it, let’s sue Apple, because the ipod supports the mp3 format and any Tom, Dick or Jane can put something into the mp3 format.
Best of all on this, is what Glenn Reynolds has to say over at Instapundit.
“Forget piracy. I think that Big Entertainment will try to use this to shut down anything that looks as if it might become an alternative distribution system.”
Mr. Reynolds and I agree on this one. That is precisely what I think the RIAA is trying to do with their heavy-handed scare tactics and ridiculous legislation in favor of their “rights”.
What scares me most right now, is that SCOTUS seems to be favoring the large corporations over the little guy, and the democrats, well they’re okay with that. So who exactly is protecting the interests of the people now?
June 27, 2005 7:36 pm 
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By Dave Justus, June 28, 2005 @ 12:10 pm
I agree with you an Glenn on the larger issue here, about what the Media Companies want, but you are over reacting as to what this ruling means.
From the ruling:
Respondents are not merely passive recipients of information about infringement. The record is replete with evidence that when they began to distribute their free software, each of them clearly voiced the objective that recipients use the software to download copyrighted works and took active steps to encourage infringement. After the notorious filesharing service, Napster, was sued by copyright holders for facilitating copyright infringement, both respondents promoted and marketed themselves as Napster alternatives.
…
In this case, the Ninth Circuit misread Sony to mean that when a product is capable of substantial lawful use, the producer cannot be held contributorily liable for third partiesÂ’ infringing use of it, even when an actual purpose to cause infringing use is shown, unless the distributors had specific knowledge of infringement at a time when they contributed to the infringement and failed to act upon that information. Sony did not displace other secondary liability theories.
-end quote
This is a valid argument on the case, I feel. This ruling explicity does not make VCRs or DVDRs illegal.
Basically they are requiring a test. If the product has substantial non-infringing use and substantial infringing use, the producers of the product can be liable for contributing to copyright infringement if they actively promote or encourage the infringing use. That seems pretty fair.
If a company was selling lockpicks with a slogan ‘Break into your neighbor’s house and steal there stuff’ I would consider them contributing to burglery even if they demonstrated that there was a legal use for the lockpicks (opening your own house when you lost your keys.) Intent can, and should matter in a case like this.
I do share the worry that this will chill innovation. However, I do not think that the fault of this is the Court, but of Congress which has not properly addressed this issue and updated and clarified copyright legislation to deal with that.
By Random Gemini, June 30, 2005 @ 9:26 am
Well first of all Dave, that post was a rant, written in all of two minutes before I ran off to play Jade Empire.
Second of all, the larger issue is what concerns me most.