Further to Tom's Copyright Post more legal nightmares
Posted by: Hawk on 27 September 2004
Just been reading an article (link below) and if its to be believed, the record companies next target in their battle to 'protect their recording rights' will be the manufacturers of such items as the iPOD. It talks about the introduction of an 'Inducing Infringements of Copyright Act'
This is a cut and paste of what it goes on to say........
Take a look. Scared yet? You should be. When the lawyers at EFF first sat down and asked "Whom could we sue under the Induce Act if we were an abusive copyright holder?" the answer was clear: pretty much everybody. Playing the devil's advocates, we knew we could draft a legal complaint against any number of the major computer or electronics manufacturers for selling everyday devices we all know and love—CD burners, MP3 players, cell phones—and that with that complaint, we could file a lawsuit that would survive any attempt to dismiss it before trial, costing the targeted company up to $1,000,000 per month in legal fees alone. The Induce Act is a nasty, brutish stick in the hands of the wrong plaintiff.
Apple's iPod music player seemed particularly vulnerable to attack. Any major record label could bring a strong lawsuit against Apple for "intentionally inducing" infringement under this new law with the iPod, both because it's plausible to argue that having an iPod enhances the lure of using P2P to download music (gotta fill all that space!) and because all the major record labels still believe that private sharing of songs from your CDs with friends is copyright infringement. We still disagree with the labels on these points, but the reality is that no court has yet convinced them that their legal theories are flawed. We also threw in Toshiba for making the iPod's hard drive and CNET for showing people how to move the iPod's music files.
Under the Supreme Court's ruling in Sony v. Universal (the Betamax VCR case), devices like the iPod and CD burners are legal as long as they have legal uses—what the Court called "substantial non-infringing uses." This has been the rule in the technology sector for the last 20 years. Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs have depended on it. Industries have blossomed under it. And any case brought against Apple or HP or Dell would be immediately dismissed because of it.
Now Senator Hatch and his allies want to tear down that rule and substitute a new one with the Induce Act. With it, the fact that a device or product has legal uses, even lots of them, is irrelevant. Filing a lawsuit under the Induce Act is like dropping a litigation bomb on any company that gives users products that have even the slightest potential to assist in copyright infringement. Technology companies will avoid being innovative, and investors will avoid supporting new technologies for fear of being sued out of existence based on the possible conduct of their customers. If this bill had been law in 1984, there would be no VCR. If this bill had been law in 1995, there would be no CD burners. If this bill had been law in 2000, there would be no iPod. If this bill becomes law in 2004, we may lose those devices and many more that we haven't even begun to imagine.
Im not qualified to know if this is just scaremongering or not, but it made me think..
Here is the link, what do you think???
http://www.eff.org/IP/Apple_Complaint.php
Cheers
Neil
This is a cut and paste of what it goes on to say........
Take a look. Scared yet? You should be. When the lawyers at EFF first sat down and asked "Whom could we sue under the Induce Act if we were an abusive copyright holder?" the answer was clear: pretty much everybody. Playing the devil's advocates, we knew we could draft a legal complaint against any number of the major computer or electronics manufacturers for selling everyday devices we all know and love—CD burners, MP3 players, cell phones—and that with that complaint, we could file a lawsuit that would survive any attempt to dismiss it before trial, costing the targeted company up to $1,000,000 per month in legal fees alone. The Induce Act is a nasty, brutish stick in the hands of the wrong plaintiff.
Apple's iPod music player seemed particularly vulnerable to attack. Any major record label could bring a strong lawsuit against Apple for "intentionally inducing" infringement under this new law with the iPod, both because it's plausible to argue that having an iPod enhances the lure of using P2P to download music (gotta fill all that space!) and because all the major record labels still believe that private sharing of songs from your CDs with friends is copyright infringement. We still disagree with the labels on these points, but the reality is that no court has yet convinced them that their legal theories are flawed. We also threw in Toshiba for making the iPod's hard drive and CNET for showing people how to move the iPod's music files.
Under the Supreme Court's ruling in Sony v. Universal (the Betamax VCR case), devices like the iPod and CD burners are legal as long as they have legal uses—what the Court called "substantial non-infringing uses." This has been the rule in the technology sector for the last 20 years. Billions of dollars and thousands of jobs have depended on it. Industries have blossomed under it. And any case brought against Apple or HP or Dell would be immediately dismissed because of it.
Now Senator Hatch and his allies want to tear down that rule and substitute a new one with the Induce Act. With it, the fact that a device or product has legal uses, even lots of them, is irrelevant. Filing a lawsuit under the Induce Act is like dropping a litigation bomb on any company that gives users products that have even the slightest potential to assist in copyright infringement. Technology companies will avoid being innovative, and investors will avoid supporting new technologies for fear of being sued out of existence based on the possible conduct of their customers. If this bill had been law in 1984, there would be no VCR. If this bill had been law in 1995, there would be no CD burners. If this bill had been law in 2000, there would be no iPod. If this bill becomes law in 2004, we may lose those devices and many more that we haven't even begun to imagine.
Im not qualified to know if this is just scaremongering or not, but it made me think..
Here is the link, what do you think???
http://www.eff.org/IP/Apple_Complaint.php
Cheers
Neil