[HN Gopher] Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over...
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Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music
https://archive.is/mEgaK
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-171_bq7d.pdf
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/607/24-171/
Author : oj2828
Score : 231 points
Date : 2026-03-25 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| https://archive.is/mEgaK
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Sweet. Some copyright infringement to start things off.
| SirFatty wrote:
| Now that is some first class irony.
| tolerance wrote:
| The System working as intended per SCOTUS!
| ls612 wrote:
| 9-0 against the record labels. This effectively ends a long
| running strategy of trying to milk ISPs for people torrenting
| without a VPN. At the same time it likely puts things like the
| *Arr stack at more risk given their more tailored nature.
| pfdietz wrote:
| And a slapdown to the lower courts being reversed.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _At the same time it likely puts things like the *Arr stack
| at more risk given their more tailored nature._
|
| Well, those would be in the same position now that they
| previously were I think.
| akersten wrote:
| > 9-0 against the record labels.
|
| Love to see it. I'm still mad about the Sony rootkit[0] and the
| people sued for absurd amounts over downloading a few MP3s back
| in the 00's.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
| tracker1 wrote:
| I still haven't bought a Sony labelled product since...
| though I may or may not have consumed Sony content. They've
| definitely lost more than they gained.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > They've definitely lost more than they gained.
|
| That's a pretty good sized ego you got yourself there. The
| number of people that cared about the rootkit in the
| general populace was insignificant to Sony. Only tech nerds
| like us even knew about the rootkit or how insane it was to
| use. Unless you were a huge flagship purchaser of Sony's
| latest/greatest each year, they don't even notice you when
| you buy a TV or any other item.
|
| People barely remember the studio getting hacked and
| releasing a film
| tracker1 wrote:
| > Lost more than they gained (from me, implied).
|
| Maybe, just maybe assume the best in people instead of
| jumping to the worst interpretations you can.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Not sure how interpreted what I said as anything other
| than the implied you. No matter how much money you did or
| no longer do spend with Sony is not anything they'd
| notice. The caveat being you were a flagship purchaser
| from them which I doubt was the case.
| azalemeth wrote:
| I too have never bought anything from Sony since then. Or
| any DRM at all, in fact.
| m-s-y wrote:
| I still boycott Sony over this. Made me a PC gamer, too.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Ironically Sony wanted those artists online for streaming,
| and in those days the only way labels had to transport the
| music to distribution services was sending the CDs. So the
| CDs landed on my desk because they'd been rejected by the
| data ingestion teams. I had some more[0] stern words with a
| very apologetic man from Sony that day.
|
| [0] they were constantly sending CDs that were fucked-up in
| totally new ways every time
| oneneptune wrote:
| A personal anecdote:
|
| I had several roommates, and we each were responsible for a
| utility. I was responsible for internet, and Cox was our
| provider.
|
| I received multiple e-mails from Cox about copyright
| infringement. I can't recall them, but I remember it being
| serious enough for me to tell people to stop.
|
| Thinking back, I feel like Cox's position is right and fair;
| let users know they're being observed by copyright holders, and
| inform the user that they could be compelled to provide their
| identity to complainants.
|
| But ultimately, the responsibility to "stop" the supposed
| infringement is on the holder, not Cox.
| autoexec wrote:
| The media industry has already decided that it should be
| allowed to turn copyright enforcement into a revenue stream and
| I doubt they're going to stop their extortion racket now.
|
| This ruling could mean that they'll increase their efforts
| targeting individuals with threatening letters demanding that
| they admit wrongdoing and settle for a few hundred to a couple
| thousand dollars at a time or else get sued in court and be
| forced to pay a lawyer tens of thousands to defend their
| innocence. It could mean they actually take more individuals to
| court instead of dropping the case every time they threaten
| somebody with enough money to hire a lawyer to defend them at
| trial.
|
| The media industry is also pushing for more control in other
| ways as well like blank media style taxes which would let them
| rake in a steady stream of cash without needing to make make
| specific accusations. They also still want to be able to force
| ISPs to instantly blacklist any IPs they accuse of streaming
| copyrighted content. They've got this power in many countries
| already and innocent users have already been screwed over by
| it. They may decide to focus their efforts on getting this
| pushed through in the US now.
|
| I doubt this ruling will lead to the kinds of broad copyright
| reforms we need, but it's long past time the courts started
| pushing back on the insane power grabs of the RIAA/MPA. No
| other industry could get away with demanding what they have.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| What does *Arr stack mean, please?
| a_vanderbilt wrote:
| Sonarr et al.
| saaaaaam wrote:
| Ah, interesting. This is not something I'm at all familiar
| with. Lots to read!
| Mindless2112 wrote:
| https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-171_bq7d.pdf
| thot_experiment wrote:
| A tiny victory. Copyright should not be more than a decade. This
| intellectual property system is one of the worst things to happen
| in modern society is what I would have said a few years ago, now
| I got bigger problems but I'm still mad.
| f1shy wrote:
| Leave it in 2, like patents. Even 3 could be tolerated. But
| current standard is crap.
| ronsor wrote:
| The reason copyright doesn't get fixed or removed is largely
| because the general public is worried more about other things
| and the big rightsholders continue their monthly payments--err,
| lobbying.
|
| Though AI might change that. In the end, large corporations get
| what they want.
| thmsths wrote:
| The general public also get sold on the rosy idea that
| copyright (and patents to a certain extent), protect the
| little guy, that thanks to this mechanism their work will not
| be stolen by opportunistic freeloaders. It also resonates
| with the "one day I will strike rich" mentality.
|
| What they usually "forget" to tell you is that your IP is
| absolutely worthless if you don't have the resources to
| defend it in court, which in turns actually advantages
| freeloaders who either have relatively low costs to sue
| (patent trolls are basically an example of this) or enough
| money that they don't feel the pain if they lose.
|
| The current system basically incentivizes suing over IP NOT
| creating it.
| bit-anarchist wrote:
| To add to the list of things that they "forget" to tell
| you, is that the real origin of copyright is fundamentally
| tied to censorship as well [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright
|
| Overall, IP seem to be a massive mistake.
| damnitbuilds wrote:
| Also: almost no works make any money at all after 5 years.
|
| Copyright terms longer than a reasonable 5 years are only
| benefitting Disney and the other big copyright cartels.
|
| They are not serving the purpose of copyright: To encourage
| creation.
| Covzire wrote:
| IANAL but it seems to have major implications beyond music
| piracy, like into the realm of ISPs and free speech in general,
| it seems the court (rightly) sees ISPs as a common carrier
| (like water pipes) and we may see more opinions of the kind
| that reach into the space of monopolies or duopolies in social
| media next.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Big tech should loose its safe harbor protection. It's both
| an aggregator AND a curator. The algorithms showing you what
| to see is no different than a newspaper editor. Just like
| newspapers big tech should be liable for their "feeds"
| showing harmful and defamatory information
| Covzire wrote:
| I would be happy if congress passed a law saying a social
| media has no liability for anything their users post as
| long as the algorithm is completely open source. If we had
| social media like that, they'd even have APIs that let
| users design their own algorithm and we'd see a golden age
| of social media emerge from it. Twitter seems to moving in
| this direction but they enjoy no legal protections from
| being open at the moment. Blusky is already this way I
| believe, but without a neutral and trusted centralized
| control it's a bit different of an animal.
| elpool2 wrote:
| I don't see how it would ever make sense to hold social
| media liable for user posted defamation.
|
| Look at the recent Afroman defamation lawsuit and consider
| how YouTube is supposed to know whether that music video
| was defamatory or not. It took a court 3 years to reach a
| conclusion but you want YouTube to make that same call
| instantly, on millions of posts a day. What you'd get is a
| world where Afroman's (non defamatory) speech basically
| cannot be shared on social media at all.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think the difference should be whether they are a dumb
| pipe, or whether they exercise editorial control and/or
| promote some content over others.
|
| If you are truly a dumb pipe, that just transmits
| whatever the users post, then you shouldn't be liable for
| what goes over your wires. Like the phone company.
|
| As soon as you start acting as an editor: amplifying some
| content and downplaying (or removing) other content, re-
| ordering it, ranking it, and so on, then you are placing
| your name on the content and in a sense should share
| liability around it.
|
| Companies should have to deliberately decide who they are
| going to be: are they just wires like the phone company,
| or are they a newspaper's letters-to-the-editor
| department? They shouldn't be able to act like one, but
| have the liability of the other.
| elpool2 wrote:
| That seems unworkable because, well, I just don't _want_
| social media to be dumb pipes. Without sites making
| editorial decisions every site will be full of porn and
| animal torture videos. The current status quo seems way
| better tbh.
| mannyv wrote:
| Why 10 years? Why not 9 years? 8 years? If one year doesn't
| make a difference then 1 year? How about 11?
|
| If you made anything that was worth protecting you might feel
| differently.
| izacus wrote:
| Because it sounds like a nice round reasonable number. Like
| many others in the law.
|
| Now stop being a clown.
| stavros wrote:
| > If you made anything that was worth protecting you might
| feel differently.
|
| How do you know they didn't? Oh, because of the No True
| Scotsman of "no person who _truly_ made something worth
| protecting can have this opinion ".
|
| As if none of us have released anything under an MIT license.
| Ridiculous.
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| Why do we send X person to prison for 5 years, and not 4
| years, or 6 years? Clearly the only rational choices are life
| sentence or no prison time.
|
| Or, why protect it for 70 years? Why not 69 years? Why not 68
| years? etc. Such a useless argument in every way.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I think I've made plenty and I don't feel differently.
|
| You could ask the same questions about the actual duration of
| copyrights as they are today. You present those rhetorical
| questions as if they were some argument against this
| proposal, but they're just things you need to think about
| regardless of what scheme you come up with: why this, and why
| not something else? It's not like "life of the author plus 70
| years, or 95 years from first publication, or 120 years from
| creation" is any less arbitrary.
|
| We should remember that the purpose of intellectual property
| laws in the US is explicitly, per the US Constitution, "To
| promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts...." The
| purpose is _not_ to ensure that creators can keep collecting
| money decades after they created their works. It _may_ be
| useful to ensure that as a way to promote progress, but it 's
| just a tool, not the goal. If progress is better promoted
| with a 10-minute copyright term then we should do that
| instead.
| prepend wrote:
| The current term in the US is like life +70 years, or
| something.
|
| While 10 is arbitrary, I like it because it is much closer to
| balancing incentive for creativity vs stifling creativity.
|
| I make software and data. It's worth protecting. But I think
| the harm from copyright protection has been greater than the
| benefit.
|
| Framing it as people who want reasonable copyright as anti-
| creator is so not cool and avoids discussion.
| acomjean wrote:
| can't IP be sold to a company that is "alive" for as long
| as it's financially viable.
|
| I always wonder when copyright runs out for artist who sold
| their collections to companies.
| Maken wrote:
| What is "financially viable"? Just hoarding copyrighted
| materials and not distributing them in order to create
| artificial scarcity could meet that criteria.
| Arainach wrote:
| > I always wonder when copyright runs out for artist who
| sold their collections to companies.
|
| This question is straightforward to answer with a single
| web search, so if you "always wonder" try looking.
|
| In this case it's the _creator_ , not the _owner_.
| ndriscoll wrote:
| I'd expect most people in this forum have made something
| "worth protecting" or even make a living doing so. Certainly
| it's been my career. I still think we should drastically
| shorten copyrights and expect more to grant it. e.g. for
| software, require source escrow to the copyright office and
| probably require source availability to purchasers, and ban
| things like hardware that only runs signed software.
| Basically the law should be GPL without redistribution, but
| where you could hire a programmer to fix things for you and
| maybe share your diff. Or just straight GPL (i.e. software
| should not be eligible for copyright as it's a functional
| thing, not a creative thing, and consumer protection law
| should make it mandatory to provide source and a way to load
| your own version for any device that has it). For other
| works, registration fees should cover storage of a master
| copy until expiration + N years so it can be released to the
| public. Maybe "source material" there as well wherever it
| makes sense. I understand that might make my career less
| lucrative. That's fine.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Whoever drafts the law has to arbitrarily choose a number, or
| there will be no end of litigation to settle it, and a judge
| will arbitrarily choose a number. OP's opinion is "not more
| than 10" so 9, 8 and 1 would all be fine with them, while 11
| would be too long. Source: reading. Meanwhile you haven't
| even made clear where you stand on the issue or what point
| you're making or in what way "differently" OP is supposed to
| feel.
| Maken wrote:
| Copyright is an artificial monopoly set in place to guarantee
| that artists get a piece of the cake from distributors. The
| duration of this monopoly is completely arbitrary, and
| ideally it should be "long enough to make art creation a
| viable trade".
| alistairSH wrote:
| _ideally it should be "long enough to make art creation a
| viable trade"_
|
| And, IMO, 10 years is in the ballpark for that to be true.
| That's ~5 major pieces of art as a minimum for a popular
| artist to have a career (assuming their 20s through 60s)
| [assuming each protected piece can sustain them for a
| decade].
| jMyles wrote:
| > If you made anything that was worth protecting you might
| feel differently.
|
| Please don't put those of us who create so-called
| 'intellectual property' for a living in the middle of this.
|
| We didn't ask for government protection and we don't want it.
|
| https://pickipedia.xyz/wiki/DRM-free
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLbqgG6o1n8
| autoexec wrote:
| It was originally 14 years back in 1790 when publishing
| anything was expensive, distribution was difficult, and
| worldwide distribution was nearly impossible. Today you can
| publish works across the globe at close to the speed of light
| and at very little cost. 10 years seems pretty damn
| reasonable.
|
| The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation of new
| works and allowing people creative access to their own
| culture accomplishes that goal a whole lot better than
| protecting the profits of corporations for ~100 years.
| xoa wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree that any single fixed term makes sense.
| Rather, I think it'd be better if the exponential cost to
| society (in terms of works that don't happen, and works that
| don't happen based on those works that didn't happen and so on
| compounding) was just part of the yearly renewal price. Do
| maybe everyone gets 7 years flat to start with, then it costs
| $100*1.3^(year). So after another 25 years it'd be around
| $70.5k renewal. At 50 years it'd be $50 million. At 75 years
| it'd be $35 billion. Fixed amount and exponential can of course
| be shifted around here but the idea would be to encourage
| creators to use works hard and if they couldn't make it work
| not sit on them but release them. Once in awhile something
| would be such a big hit it'd be worth keeping a long time, and
| that's ok, but society gets its due too. And most works would
| be allowed to lapse as they stopped being worth it.
|
| Another alternative/additional approach would be to split up
| the nature of copyright, vs an all or nothing total monopoly.
| Let there be 7-10 years of total copyright, then another 7-14
| years where no exclusivity of where it's sold or DRM is
| allowed, then 7/14/21 years where royalties can still be had
| but licensing is mandatory at FRAND rates, then finally some
| period of "creditright" where the creator has no control or
| licensing, but if they wish can still require any derivative
| works to give them a spot in the credits.
|
| I think there is a lot of unexplored territory for IP, and wish
| the conversations were less binary.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| How about something like IP as a tax? IE: if you make profit
| off of it, then it cranks up. There's plenty of music artists
| who's song blow up a decade or more later.
| xoa wrote:
| I want to be super clear that I'm not proposing some
| finalized plan or numbers here, it'd need some real work
| spent hashing it all out. Mainly though I hope people will
| consider more the huge space of untapped approaches to
| balancing various benefits and costs towards a better
| societal outcome. And that maybe that helps a little in
| getting us out of some of the present seemingly intractable
| boxes we so often seem stuck in?
|
| Your tax idea could certainly be another useful tool. My
| main immediate thought/caution would be:
|
| > _IE: if you make profit off of it, then it cranks up.
| There 's plenty of music artists who's song blow up a
| decade or more later._
|
| As we have endless examples of, "profit" and even "revenue"
| can be subject to a lot of manipulation/fudging given the
| right incentives. I also think that part of the cost I
| describe is objective: whether it takes off right away or
| takes off after a decade, as long as it's under full
| copyright it's imposing a cost on society the whole time.
| Also other stuff like risk of it getting lost/destroyed. So
| I do think there needs to be some counter to that in the
| system, sitting on something, even if it makes no money,
| shouldn't be free.
|
| But the graduated approach might help with this too, and
| again they could be mixed and matched. It could be 100
| _1.3^n to keep full copyright, but only 50_ 1.2^n to
| maintain "licenseright", 25*1.15^n for "FRANDright", and
| free for the remaining period of "creditright". Or
| whatever, play around with numbers and consider different
| outcomes. But feels like there's room for improvement over
| the present state of affairs.
| pwg wrote:
| That's how you end up with "Hollywood accounting" where
| movies that gross over 100M dollars still show as a "loss"
| for tax purposes via creative accounting methods.
| phillipseamore wrote:
| When old art gets a revival like that it's usually because
| the work is being reused (e.g. song used in an ad, Tv show,
| movie), something that costs time and money to license when
| done legally. How many artists lost their chances because
| navigating copyright is tedious and expensive?
| underlipton wrote:
| The two biggest examples I can think of were because of a
| joke (Never Gonna Give You Up) and a glitch (Plastic
| Love).
| acomjean wrote:
| I think this is a great idea.
|
| Free then make it cost more. A lot could enter the public
| domain, and valuable IP could be kept by companies as long as
| they're willing to pay.
| autoexec wrote:
| I think that's a horrible idea. There's zero benefit to
| society in letting corporations like Disney that can afford
| to pay keep works out of the public domain longer than
| others.
| underlipton wrote:
| If Disney had to pay the federal government a few billion
| each to keep absolute control over their oldest works,
| every year, no tax games, that would be pretty great for
| society. But it's also probably true that the tax games
| would indeed ensue. Something something low trust, we
| can't have nice things.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| Disney are able to pay that amount because their IP is
| still generating massive income.
|
| I'm not a fan of Disney at all, just pointing out what i
| belive might be the flaw in the argument.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Disney are able to pay that amount because their IP is
| still generating massive income.
|
| That's entirely irrelevant though. The point of copyright
| isn't to protect income. The point is to encourage the
| creation of new works. Disney doesn't need 100+ years of
| exclusive profits on something to encourage them to
| create new works. Nobody does.
|
| I'd even argue that the more popular a work is the more
| important it is that it enter the public domain sooner
| rather than later. The less cultural relevancy something
| has when it enters the public domain the less likely it
| will inspire new works to be created.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Another thing that doesn't get brought up enough:
| Copyright is not really needed to encourage creation.
|
| Suppose Copyright as a concept was overturned and no
| longer existed. Would Disney just say "Well, it was a
| great run, but we're going to close up shop and no longer
| create works." Would an independent artist who needs to
| paint something decide not to just because it couldn't be
| copyright?
|
| "The creation of new works" doesn't need to be
| encouraged. It's the default. Cavemen still carved on
| cave walls without copyright.
| autoexec wrote:
| You're absolutely right that artists can't stop
| themselves from creating, but I think that a reasonable
| amount of protection still does encourage more works.
|
| Many works require a good deal of investment and time and
| if people had little to no chance of making money or
| breaking even on that investment a lot of works wouldn't
| get made.
|
| Another nice aspect of copyright law is that it
| establishes where a work originated. Authorship gets lost
| in a lot of the things we treat as if they don't have
| copyrights. For example memes, or the way every MP3 of a
| parody song on P2P platforms ended up listing Weird Al as
| the artist regardless of his involvement. It also happens
| in cases where copyright really doesn't exist like with
| recipes and as a result we don't really know who first
| came up with many of the foods we love. A very limited
| copyright term would more firmly establish who we should
| thank for the things we enjoy.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| With respect - copyright's protection of income _is_ the
| point
|
| That's, by design, the tool used to encourage people to
| invest their time into producing works.
|
| We would not be having this conversation at all if people
| weren't able to make money of these works - there'd be no
| point to copyright at all if there wasn't money to be
| made (by the artists) and the reproduction of their works
| wasn't restricting their ability to generate that income
| (for themselves, or their agents).
|
| I want to emphasise that I am not arguing in favour of
| the system, only how and why it works this way.
| autoexec wrote:
| > That's, by design, the tool used to encourage people to
| invest their time into producing works.
|
| The tool used was control over distribution. If income
| was the point copyright law could just hand tax payer
| money over to anyone who created something. That'd
| guarantee income instead of the system we have which
| allows artists to invest in the creation of a work and
| still never make a dime on it. Ultimately though, I do
| see your point and I agree that making it possible to
| earn enough money to justify the creation, publishing,
| and distribution of a creative work was a large part of
| the intention along with the establishment of the public
| domain.
|
| I probably should have phrased that as "The point of
| copyright isn't to protect income until the work is no
| longer highly profitable"
| chipdale wrote:
| > There's zero benefit to society
|
| Wouldn't it result in additional tax revenue while
| _preventing_ Disney 's movies from proliferating
| throughout society unimpeded?
|
| In all honesty, I really think you should think this idea
| through. Compared to the status quo, where we get zero
| tax revenue from intellectual property, this system would
| guarantee an expiration based on commercial viability. It
| couldn't sustain forever because the scale would always
| accelerate at a rate faster than any economy could
| sustain it. But it would have this additional benefit in
| that the more some intellectual property becomes
| commercially sustainable, the more revenue society can
| collect.
|
| How does that even begin to approach horrible when it's
| magnitudes more equitable than the status quo?
| Barbing wrote:
| Both creative and intriguing ideas, I like it!
| foresto wrote:
| I think I like the idea, but I can't help wondering if it
| would have unforeseen consequences.
|
| Could this approach undermine the protections afforded by
| open-source licenses? (IANAL.)
| xoa wrote:
| > _I think I like the idea, but I can 't help wondering if
| it would have unforeseen consequences._
|
| As I said in a sibling comment, quickie comments on HN
| should be taken more as mental stimulation and kickoff
| points for further discussion as opposed to "final bill
| that has been revised in committee and is going to the
| floor for a full vote". The details of implementation are
| certainly critical, and not trivial either! I'm fully in
| support of thinking through various use cases. But part of
| why I'm interested in alternate approaches is that they
| might give us finer grained tools.
|
| > _Could this approach undermine the protections afforded
| by open-source licenses? (IANAL.)_
|
| I have actually considered that as well but didn't add it
| into a quickie comment. If we take the second path of
| approaches I listed there, then thinking about it all open
| source software would fall under a special even more
| permissive class of the tier 3, in that it already has
| "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" licensing for all
| right? Except that it's also free. The motivation here is
| the "advancement of the useful arts & sciences" and the
| public good, so having it be explicit that "if you're
| releasing under an open source license and thus giving up
| your standard first, second, and part of your third period
| of IP rights and monopoly, you're excluded from needing to
| pay a license fee because you've already enable the public
| to make derivative works for free for decades when they
| wouldn't otherwise anyway."
|
| All _that_ said, I 'll also ask fwiw if it'd even be _that_
| big a deal given the pace of development? I do think it 'd
| be both ideal and justified if OSS had a longer period for
| free, that's still a square deal to the public IMO. But
| like, even if an OSS work went out protection (and keep in
| mind that a motivated community that could raise even a few
| thousand dollars would be able to just pay for an extra
| decade no problem, the cost doesn't really ramp up for
| awhile [which might itself be considered a flaw?]) after 10
| years, how much is it worth it that 2016 era OSS (and no
| changes since remember, it's a constantly rolling window)
| now could have proprietary works be worth it against 10
| year old proprietary software all getting pushed into the
| public domain far faster? That's worth some contemplation.
| Maybe requiring that source/assets be provided to the
| Library of Congress or something and is released at the
| same time the work loses copyright would be a good balance,
| having all that available for down the road would be a huge
| win vs what we've seen up until now.
|
| Anyway, all food for thought is all.
| mrandish wrote:
| > quickie comments on HN should be taken more as mental
| stimulation and kickoff points for further discussion
|
| Indeed.
|
| Setting aside variable details like time frames and cost
| structures which can be debated separately, what I found
| interesting about your suggestion is it's a mechanism to
| create an escalating incentive for copyright holders to
| relinquish copyrights even sooner than the standard
| copyright period. Currently, no matter what the term
| length, it costs nothing to sit on a copyright until it
| expires - so everyone does - even if they never do
| anything with the copyright. And the copyright exists
| even if the company goes bankrupt or the copyright holder
| dies. Thus we end up with zombie copyrights which keep
| lurking in the dark for works which are _almost
| certainly_ abandon-ware or orphan-ware simply because our
| current system defaults to one-and-done granting of
| "life of the inventor + 70 years" for everything.
|
| Obviously, we should dramatically shorten the standard
| copyright length but no matter what we shorten it to (10,
| 15, 20 yrs etc) we should consider requiring some
| recurring renewal before expiration as a separate idea.
| Even if it's just paying a small processing fee and
| sending in simple DIY form, it sets the do-nothing-
| default to "auto-expire" for things the inventor doesn't
| care about (and may even have forgotten about). That's a
| net benefit to society we should evaluate separately from
| debates about term lengths.
|
| I see your suggestion about automatically escalating the
| cost of recurring renewal as another separate layer worth
| considering on its own merits. My guess would be just
| requiring any recurring renewal would cause around half
| of all copyrights to auto-expire before reaching their
| full term - even if the renewal stayed $10. The idea of
| having recurring renewal costs escalate, regardless of
| when the escalation kicks in, or how much it escalates,
| is a mechanism which could achieve even more net positive
| societal benefits by increasing the incentive to
| relinquish copyrights sooner.
| davidgtl wrote:
| An adversarial approach would also be interesting: People
| could open positions of "I would buy a right to use this
| copyright for $XYZ if it was released today"
|
| So the copyright holder would have the option to EITHER
| cashout at any point (and consider the work/invested effort
| paid) OR counter-bid the sum of everyone to keep it.
|
| Not sure about the implications, but it would encourage the
| most (economically) productive route
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| I'm a big proponent of compulsory licensing, which could
| certainly be limited to renewals so that creative control
| is still granted for some amount of time.
| da_chicken wrote:
| No, the problem with this is that a lot of IPs aren't
| profitable in their initial years, and this pretty strictly
| encourages property-holding as a business. That's exactly the
| wrong kind of revenue generation that copyright is supposed
| to be encouraging. It's empty rent-seeking.
|
| Further, I think that the premise is flawed. Rather than
| being more protected by being profitable, a work should be
| _less_ protected the more it has profited the owners. If you
| can make $50 million profit as an individual from your
| creative work that took 5 years to produce, then you 're
| done. Dozens of lifetimes of wealth for 5 years of work? No,
| that's more than enough. You don't deserve more money for
| that. You have been suitably encouraged. The trouble with
| that idea is that "creative accounting" is too easy, so that
| won't really work, either.
|
| I think it should match patent law. 20 years, and that's it.
| After that, if you want to keep making profit, you need to
| make something new. Because that's what it's supposed to do:
| let you make a living if you're able, and encourage you to
| keep working to create more.
| autoexec wrote:
| I agree with you that 10 years is more than enough time for
| corporations to turn a healthy profit on something (not that
| they can't continue to make money off of a work after it has
| entered the public domain), but this wasn't a small victory.
|
| If every ISP were at risk of being on the hook for endless
| billions in damages because of what their users did it would
| mean that ISPs would be forced to give in to the RIAA/MPAs
| demands to permanently terminate the accounts of internet users
| over completely unproven (and often inaccurate) accusations of
| piracy. It's worth noting that cox was actually already doing
| this in a limited number of circumstances, and the media
| industry still wasn't satisfied.
|
| The media industry insisted that they needed the power to get
| people's accounts terminated even though it would have left
| many people, including fully innocent ones, cut off from the
| internet entirely. This was a big deal, and I'm honestly
| surprised to see this supreme court do the right thing.
| pjc50 wrote:
| At this stage I just want a coherent system. There is no way
| "individuals can have their accounts terminated for one song"
| and "AI companies can download a complete copy of everything,
| including pirated works, and roll it into models which can
| reproduce it exactly and sell it back to you" should be able to
| co-exist.
| jMyles wrote:
| > now I got bigger problems but I'm still mad.
|
| I'm not so sure they're unrelated.
|
| The bondage of intellectual property forces very particular
| branches of human development to the exclusion of others. It's
| no surprise that restriction of thought and creativity - and
| most of all, music - is to be found alongside war and predation
| and uninspired leadership.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Why do you think others should have the right to something they
| didn't create?
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I think it should be for a lifetime of the original author and
| non-transferable. The system is already rigged very much
| against artists, it's amazing how many people still contribute
| to culture under the given conditions. I don't see any reason
| why someone who writes a Christmas song or a novel shouldn't
| have a possibility to get payments for their works until they
| die, for example. However, I have a lot of problems with the
| bizarre extensions that companies and heirs have gotten for
| work they haven't created on their own.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| In a world where copyright only lasts 10 years, what happens to
| the musician whose song from 20 years ago is used in a movie
| and becomes super popular? Do they get royalties or are there
| no royalties involved?
|
| I want a system that doesn't syphon money to the corporations
| over the individual creator and the corporations can't tell me
| I can't use the song.
| mkl wrote:
| No royalties, as the 20-year-old song would be in the public
| domain, so no one can tell anyone they can't use the song.
| The vast majority of songs that make a profit will do so
| within the first few years, with almost or actually nothing
| after 10 years. The copyright system should optimise for
| public benefit and the vast majority of works, rather than
| the tiny number of big successes.
| MoonWalk wrote:
| Disagree on the decade. There are plenty of examples of great
| movies or other works that took longer than a decade to bring
| to the public. Those projects would have been completely non-
| viable if their content could have been stolen after creators
| put a decade into their development.
|
| I think 25 or even 50 years is more defensible. But 100? Nah.
|
| But the crushing problem today for many of us here is SOFTWARE
| PATENTS. These should never have been allowed in the first
| place; and until their scourge is abolished, everyone is at
| risk for having his work stolen with one.
| dawnerd wrote:
| We should do a split system where its like life of artist or
| 25 years, whichever is longer. Seems like a good balance for
| the artists estate too.
| bombcar wrote:
| The usual way to do that is to have renewals or other
| periods; then things that are abandoned fall out of
| copyright, but things that the author is alive to protect
| remain in.
|
| It's moderately hard to build a law based on what people
| think is "fair" mainly because fairness often has more to
| do with feelings (it would be fair for someone to make a
| Hobbit movie because the author is long dead; it would be
| unfair for someone to make a Potter movie because the
| author is alive, etc) than with an easily quantifiable
| rule.
|
| I've often thought the solution is to define copyright (of
| things published, not trade secrets and unpublished works)
| as being something that can ONLY be defended as long as the
| work is "available" in the marketplace for "reasonable"
| amounts. As long as Warner Bros or whoever it is keeps
| selling the Lord of the Rings (extended edition) on DVD or
| whatever, they can j'accuse infringers of downloading it.
|
| But ten years after it's no longer in print? No longer in
| copyright, either.
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| What about 10 years, then compulsory licensing goes into
| effect for any remaining duration and renewal?
| tgv wrote:
| I'm not sure that's the correct approach. Why do you want to
| have free access to other people's books, movies, and songs in
| the first place? I have the feeling that's not the case, but
| what is it then?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I think for Music / Movies / Shows, sure, for Software?
| Probably not so simple.
| bombcar wrote:
| Some would argue software shouldn't be copyrightable at all.
|
| And their arguments aren't entirely without merit, either.
|
| Hard to make them on a site dedicated to selling software and
| its byproducts, perhaps.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| If copyright was only a decade then Sony could have waited 5
| more years and made the movie of _Project Hail Mary_ without
| paying one dime to Andy Weir.
|
| I think the law is too long now, but a decade is too short to
| protect artists. Even a patent is 20 years.
| selectively wrote:
| Rare good decision from SCOTUS.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| So... does that mean we don't have to care about takedown notices
| anymore?
|
| Like, the only reason to comply with such an onerous and
| censorious takedown regime was specifically to disclaim
| contributory copyright liability that SCOTUS just unanimously
| decided to erase. Is it such that as long as people aren't stupid
| and don't market their services as an infringement facilitator,
| which most don't, that they don't have to honor 512 takedown
| notices now? Conversely, services dumb enough to actually market
| themselves as infringement tools probably can't get rid of their
| liability by the 512 safe harbor. So there's no reason to
| actually honor a DMCA takedown request anymore.
| intrasight wrote:
| This is about moving bits through the pipes and not the
| resources that those pipes are moving.
| elpool2 wrote:
| It seems like you would still have to remove the infringing
| _content_ , but no need to disconnect or ban the user who
| shared it.
|
| But if you're a pure ISP and not hosting content on your own
| servers, then I guess, yeah DMCA doesn't really apply to you?
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| This was what GFiber appeared to be doing until it sold out
| to private equity. I got about 60 DMCA notice emails about
| torrents that never reached seeding state. About 25% of them
| were false accusations with wrong titles unrelated to
| activity by anyone on my network.
| elpool2 wrote:
| Actually, it looks like there is something in the law that
| only provides DMCA safe harbor to providers that have a
| policy of terminating accounts of repeat infringers. I'm
| still not sure if an ISP would even need that safe harbor
| though.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Lower circuit court said they did, Supreme Court overturned
| that.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I don't think so. They need to have the policy of
| terminating accounts and actually terminate a subset of
| them. They just can't be held liable for not terminating
| all of them.
| autoexec wrote:
| ISPs still need to comply with the DMCA. In their decision the
| court did weigh the fact that "Cox repeatedly discouraged
| copyright infringement by sending warnings, suspending
| services, and terminating accounts." so I would expect that
| processing DMCA notices and even repeat offender terminations
| will continue to be a part of an ISP's enforcement policy.
|
| That said, I think there's a reasonable argument to be made
| that a customer should only be terminated as a last step and
| only after the ISP has been made aware that their customer is
| actually a repeat offender. Getting a large number of unproven
| accusations should not be enough.
| strogonoff wrote:
| It's interesting to see how as soon as intellectual property
| theft starts to be critical for powerful interests the legal
| system magically gets more lenient about copyright enforcement.
|
| The balance between public good and protecting IP ownership of
| the creatives (which is, paradoxically, also part of the public
| good) has to be struck and enforced consistently.
| prepend wrote:
| How is IP "theft" more important now than 20 years ago?
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| AI training
| prepend wrote:
| AI training might be copyright infringement. But there's no
| cases or laws to establish that.
|
| I don't think this case or anything else has been affected
| by AI training on copyrighted material, if it is deemed
| infringing.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's been demonstrated that some companies, even F10
| ones, have been using pirated content to train their AI.
| prepend wrote:
| Yes, but not demonstrated that that training is illegal.
| esseph wrote:
| What?
|
| Anthropic ($1.5B+ Settlement): In September 2025,
| Anthropic agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion to settle a
| class-action lawsuit over using roughly 500,000
| copyrighted books from "shadow libraries" to train their
| Claude LLMs.
| acomjean wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-
| torrented-o...
|
| They all seem to be using pirated books. Probably
| slightly better than just web stuff as it is presumably
| edited.
|
| The authors case was thrown out on narrow reasoning. But
| companies now live by different rules so I suspect they
| won't be held to account. Even Disney/nintendo are
| unlikely to stop this...
|
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/judge-tosses-authors-
| ai-tr...
| Permit wrote:
| Isn't this decision in exact opposition to the point you're
| trying to make?
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| It's interesting to see how people look for powerful interests
| to explain simple and correct supreme court decisions.
| Kye wrote:
| Without the login wall:
| https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat...
| busymom0 wrote:
| > They said that Cox had ignored bad actors, helping 60,000 users
| distribute more than 10,000 copyrighted songs for free
|
| This is such a tiny number for a company which provides internet
| to over 6 million homes. I was expecting it to be in millions or
| at least hundreds of thousands.
| scott_w wrote:
| Just to try and understand the decision, an analogy that's coming
| to mind would be like saying a van manufacturer wouldn't have
| liability if it's used in a bank robbery. However if the
| manufacturer sold it with the intent for the buyer to use it for
| bank robbery (the manufacturer having the intent in this case, as
| well as the robber themselves), then they could become partially
| liable.
|
| Have I got that right?
| achandlerwhite wrote:
| That's my understanding. Basic carrier vs service stuff. What I
| wonder is how this might impact gun manufacturers.
| vetrom wrote:
| There already is a specific law shielding gun manufacturers
| from liability from simple sales, which Democrat heavy states
| and locales do a lot of work to test the edges of and chip
| away at: the PLCAA, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_
| of_Lawful_Commerce_... which was passed in 2005 in light of
| mendacious lawsuits taking up a notable amount of courts'
| time.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Yeah. The courts are inconsistent here. If they want to hold
| service providers responsible, they also must make arms
| producer responsible, and politicians too.
| MBCook wrote:
| Well this is a copyright case and guns aren't. Couldn't
| that be a big reason for the difference?
| stackskipton wrote:
| Courts are not inconsistent, they are following the law.
| Like most cases decided by SCOTUS, they are deciding on the
| rules set by Congress and courts have ruled time and time
| again, that Constitution gives Congress almost sole
| jurisdiction for determining how Copyright law functions.
|
| For copyright law, Congress does not expressly allow
| secondary liability for third parties FOR COPYRIGHT unless
| the party induced the infringement or the provided service
| is tailored to that infringement. In this case, Cox was not
| cutting off copyright infringers BUT since their service
| could be used by same infringers for valid use, they didn't
| have to.
|
| For arms producer, Congress has exempted them for liability
| and courts have ruled, yep, Congress gets to make the rules
| here.
|
| Congress could overturn both rulings by changing the law.
|
| This is what we want. Congress makes the rules, courts
| interpret but don't make new rules.
| vetrom wrote:
| So, merely selling 'with intent' for the van to be used in a
| robbery I don't think meets the bar as the opinion is written.
| In particular, I read "...which can be shown only if the party
| induced the infringement or the provided service is tailored to
| that infringement;"
|
| In that vein, merely selling a tool even if a predominant use
| or intention of that tool is infringement, the infringement
| must be actively induced or invited by the seller. This is also
| affirmed in detail in the USSC opinion: "The Court has
| repeatedly made clear--see Kalem Co. v. Harper Brothers, 222 U.
| S. 55, Sony, and Grokster--that mere knowledge that a service
| will be used to infringe is insufficient to establish the
| required intent to infringe."
|
| This is the primary part of the opinion, the first 7 of 27
| pages. I'm still reading the rest and will update when
| finished. (Concurring Opinion and Dissents I believe)
|
| ===
|
| The meat of the opinion has some interesting elements as well:
|
| * "Internet service providers, such as Cox, have limited
| knowledge about how their Internet services are used and who
| uses them. They do know which IP address corresponds to which
| subscriber's account, but they cannot distinguish one
| individual user from another...However, because online
| infringement is so widespread, pursuing each individual
| infringer does little to stem the tide.": mere IP logs are not
| enough to establish liability, perhaps. More importantly, it is
| opined that individual fishing expeditions dont actually serve
| the end of eliminating infringement. This does not absolve
| individual liability, but it becomes important later.
|
| * "Holding Cox liable merely for failing to terminate Internet
| service to infringing accounts would expand secondary copyright
| liability beyond our precedents ... The Fourth Circuit's
| holding thus went beyond the two forms of liability recognized
| in Grokster and Sony. It also conflicted with this Court's
| repeated admonition that contributory liability cannot rest
| only on a provider's knowledge of infringement and insufficient
| action to prevent it.": This points to another case where
| Circuit and District courts have been ignoring the instruction
| of higher courts, in this case, inventing new liabilities where
| none existed. This doesn't go so far as to repudiate entirely
| the idea of fishing expeditions having teeth, but it places a
| clear guardrail around expanding liability without laws
| establishing such.
|
| ===
|
| The Sotomayor concurrence on judgment states that the Justice
| does not believe the methods used by the majority opinion are
| correct, but still agrees with the judgement because of
| insufficient information presented by Sony. I think the
| analysis gone into in this section is flawed, but it is also
| not precedential since it is not the Order part of the opinion.
| I am also out of time to poke at that part for the moment. It
| does relate this case to the closest recent big case on
| secondary liability though, that of Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc.
| v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, so its worth reading even if the
| justifying analysis I think does not fit.
|
| The big difference I guess is whether you think negative
| jurisdiction (limiting what the government can do) vs positive
| jurisdiction (further enabling the government) is more
| important, but considering HN and the exhortations against
| divisive commentary, I'd rather not dive into the weeds arguing
| that part here.
| pavon wrote:
| MGM vs Grokster is a good decision to read to understand the
| boundaries of contributory infringement.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios,_Inc._v._Grokster,...
| .
|
| https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/545/913/
| smallerize wrote:
| In this case, there is a safe harbor where ISPs can avoid
| liability by enforcing a policy against their customers that
| eventually cuts them off for repeated infringement. Cox stepped
| outside of this safe harbor by not following their own policy.
| But the court says that doesn't automatically make them liable.
| ok123456 wrote:
| Does this mean the entire enforcement regime is now more or
| less a paper tiger? It's sufficient to have a process that
| satisfies the letter of the law, but you can simply not
| follow through and enforce it.
| forgotaccount3 wrote:
| > It's sufficient to have a process that satisfies the
| letter of the law
|
| No.
|
| Let's take an example of 401ks.
|
| Any company that has a 401k has to pass non-discrimination
| testing to ensure their plan doesn't favor highly
| compensated employees over non-highly compensated
| employees. This is done through Actual Deferral Percentage
| and Actual Contribution Percentage tests. Just doing these
| tests can be very costly.
|
| If you don't want to do these tests, then you can follow a
| 'safe harbor' action where the company automatically
| contributes x% for everyone. If the plan executes the 'safe
| harbor' action, then they automatically pass the two tests
| above.
|
| However, if they don't follow through that plan they may
| still not have violated the nondiscrimination policies if
| they end up passing those two tests.
|
| So to bring it back to the circumstance here, because Cox
| was not following their own processes which would have
| afforded them safe harbor they do not get the benefit of
| being automatically protected from the action. Then the
| court goes to see if Cox was sufficiently involved in the
| violating actions in order to be liable, and the court
| found that Cox was not.
|
| So going back to the line...: > It's sufficient to have a
| process that satisfies the letter of the law, but you can
| simply not follow through and enforce it.
|
| Not at all. Because it was not enforced, Cox lost the safe
| harbor protections and had to defend themselves.
| nine_k wrote:
| Yes, as much as I understand it. You have to either make a van
| that's specifically tailored to performing bank robberies (a
| door-smashing attachment at the front, a pulley to quickly get
| the safe box inside, etc), or at least advertise it as such
| ("Will get you from the robbery site faster than police can
| react!"). Otherwise, it's just a van. Owning a van, or selling
| a van, is not illegal because it _could_ also be used to break
| law. (One 's hands can be used to break law, but this does not
| lead to a liability for merely possessing hands.)
| gosub100 wrote:
| I think a better analogy would be crack pipes sold in minimarts
| in a box that says "for tobacco use only". Crackheads estate
| sues the pipe mfr says you knew people were using it for crack
| and are proximately liable for facilitating the drug use.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| ..and any delivery, distributors, importers, and shippers
| should be held liable, also.
| themafia wrote:
| I watched a drug addict lovingly turn a plain lightbulb into
| a meth pipe.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Sure, and aluminum foil can be used to smoke heroin. But
| they have primary obvious uses. That's the difference, vs
| knowing 99% of customers are going to use it for something
| nefarious. Even better example would be whippets or NOs
| meant for culinary or automotive use, but also usable for
| teens getting high. If manufacturers are aware and turn a
| blind eye, they can become liable.
| themafia wrote:
| The problem is these companies are typically natural
| monopolies. So it's not as if I choose this provider because
| they were lax in their copyright enforcement. I'd literally
| have to sell my house and move to accomplish this.
| bombcar wrote:
| An example closer to home is those file sharing sites that
| allow you to pay to "download faster" which skirt _very close_
| to the line, if not go over it.
|
| But Grokster et al openly advertised that you could get all
| music "for free".
|
| Where the gray area is would be something that arguably can
| ONLY be used for piracy (an example of what this would be is
| hard to imagine, but maybe a device that can ONLY duplicate
| encrypted blurays and cannot do it for non-encrypted ones - yes
| I know there are arguments even here via fair
| use/backup/personal copy) and/or something that is
| substantially _advertised_ as for piracy - something that
| nobody would have a reason to _buy_ unless they were pirating,
| perhaps - something where free /open source similar software
| exists but can't be used to pirate?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| If you run an add saying "This van can outrun the cops" you're
| in trouble. Selling a van to a known bank-robber is fine
| though.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Yes, I think so. Another analogy is firearms. They can be used
| to commit or facilitate crimes, yet nobody is suing gun
| manufacturers.
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| Glad to have one less reason to incentivize ISPs to monitor every
| single thing we do on the internet.
| plagiarist wrote:
| They are already incentivized enough by selling the data, more
| incentives won't change anything.
| MBCook wrote:
| The ruling said that they don't have to.
|
| Going with your point, it does not say they can't monitor and
| then sell the list of pirates to Sony/etc. for some extra
| income.
|
| They just didn't like doing it for free.
| iugtmkbdfil834 wrote:
| Yes, but then the question becomes: which tactics does MPAA
| and the like will now resort to. Because we know they won't
| exactly say 'I guess that's it then'.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| The MPAA has limited options given they aren't any sort
| of government entity with any real enforcement power. All
| they can do is keep suing as they hope for a different
| outcome and/or try new forms of DRM.
| tencentshill wrote:
| This isn't good. They can still sue you, but now they need proof
| that you as an individual behind that public IP did it. This will
| only incentivize them to join the push for ID requirements.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| They aren't suing some broke 23 year old. What they can collect
| is less than their lawyer fees.
|
| At worst, universities crack down harder on torrents, but that
| was always an option for labels.
| vetrom wrote:
| There is a very important consideration here that this
| opinion doesn't really touch on, but I think is invited down
| the road for future cases and legislation: Can you compel the
| speech of a third party to aid in exploratory evidence
| gathering (aka fishing expeditions) without a clear, well
| defined, and particular, cause of action at court to issue a
| subpoena?
|
| In most classic U.S. jurisdiction, no, you cannot. Compelled
| activity or speech is generally frowned upon. The most
| important part of this case, IMO, was the Supreme Court
| constraining the Fourth Circuit's interpretation of
| contributory liability and attempting to turn the DMCA system
| into one for enabling those fishing expeditions.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| > They aren't suing some broke 23 year old. What they can
| collect is less than their lawyer fees.
|
| You may not be old enough to remember this, but that's
| _exactly_ what they did in the 2000 's
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| There's a lot more 23 year olds to this time around. I
| don't think you can intimidate them down this time.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| They didn't exactly intimidate them down last time
| either. Piracy decisively won the war on piracy.
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, they won. Piracy stayed at a microscopic level rather
| than becoming the usual way people got things. It
| stagnated, and maybe shrank. That's why they don't want
| to go into the piracy stopping business, it's a waste of
| time and money for them when they could be going after
| and negotiating with AI.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I think they still sometimes go for it even when they know
| they aren't recouping their losses, to deter/scare potential
| users. Obviously that doesn't scale and it's mostly for
| publicity stunts but it did happen here in Canada. They more
| or less just scanned a few trackers and went after every
| Canadian IP address they found for the given torrents.
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/movie-studios-
| bit...
| bickfordb wrote:
| I wonder what effect this will have on file sharing services like
| Megaupload?
| supertrope wrote:
| In terms of legality Megaupload messed up by directly
| participating in copyright infringement. They paid people to
| upload copyrighted movies. Cox doesn't reward people for
| copyright infringement. The lawsuit against them argued they
| failed to take enough precautions (for example cutting off
| subscribers upon receiving an accusation from a third party)
| and that should make them liable.
|
| In practice Megaupload is not an established company. Other
| consumer file storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive,
| Microsoft OneDrive, Apple iCloud are trillion dollar companies
| with deep legal benches and lobbying muscle. YouTube seeded the
| service with pirated content and Google helped fight off a
| copyright lawsuit by finding evidence that one rights holder
| uploaded their own video and then claimed infringement.
| shevy-java wrote:
| > The provider of a service is contributorily liable for a user's
| infringement only if it intended that the provided service be
| used for infringement
|
| So they try to hold the provider responsible. While I disagree
| with this, I can at the least understand some rationale behind
| it, even though this is inconsistent. For instance, if someone
| uses a gun to shoot down someone, why is the company providing
| the gun not held accountable here? They should also be forced to
| pay compensation damage to people being harmed here. But this is
| besides the point I am trying to make.
|
| The thing is that I do not want to be held accountable under such
| a law. I believe when it comes to information, courts should not
| be allowed to restrict me or anyone else in any way, shape or
| form. I want a free society. That means flow of information can
| never be restricted by any such actors. Granted, this is not
| possible right now anywhere on Planet Earth as far as I am aware,
| and I understand the implication of this too (no more secrets
| possible), but I want this 100%. Yet I can't have that because
| courts restrict me, and all those who want the same, arbitrarily
| so. IMO this also means that such courts must be changed. Right
| now we have corporate courts where the money addiction flows in.
| I understand this system and the problems of this system. This is
| why there must be a transition starting from the society, to no
| longer make it possible to restrict service providers here in any
| way, shape or form. The same would apply to democracy - I don't
| want to accept indirect democracy run by lobbyists. I want to be
| in charge, in proportion to my vote, at all times, of every
| decision (I am ok delegating this to representatives, mind you,
| but not automatically and not always; in indirect democracy you
| vote for some representative who can then do whatever he wants
| to. I am not ok with this. How many former Trump voters would,
| right now, want Trump to be gone from power, or in prison? I
| think many would, considering the damage he caused and is still
| causing).
| socalgal2 wrote:
| > if someone uses a gun to shoot down someone, why is the
| company providing the gun not held accountable here?
|
| The gun company will claim they sold for self defense or just
| for a hobbyist's collection - They'll claim that the gun owner
| used it for something else is not their responsibility. Same
| for any or product that can be used to kill someone with.
| aksss wrote:
| Let's not forget sports, which is a huge segment of the gun-
| owning public - trap, skeet, biathlon, PRS, USPSA/IPSC, High
| Power/CMP, etc.
| aksss wrote:
| > if someone uses a gun..why is the company providing the gun
| not held accountable here?
|
| They absolutely can be held accountable. The Protection of
| Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) has carve-outs for:
| negligent entrustment - when a dealer or manufacturer provides
| a firearm knowing it will be used for a crime; negligence per
| se - when a seller knowingly violated state or federal laws in
| the sale or marketing of the product (and that sale was a
| proximate cause of the harm); defects in design; breach of
| contract/warranty.
|
| However, selling a product for lawful use, whether a gun,
| truck, or Internet connectivity, does not make the seller
| liable if the consumer decides to use that otherwise lawful
| product for crimes. There has to be some assumption of agency
| (and liability) on the part of the individual who is clearing
| ethical/moral hurdles to do wrong.
|
| I don't see how this unanimous court decision conflicts with
| that theory in the context of the ISP - in fact, I think it's a
| reinforcement of some common sense.
| bombcar wrote:
| Using a "gun" in the example is just a away to incite
| people's natural reactions one way or another.
|
| A fairer example would be holding Microsoft liable for people
| using Word for ransom notes or something.
| rimunroe wrote:
| Funnily enough the only time I ever got in trouble for torrenting
| anything was when Cox was my ISP circa 2009. I'd been torrenting
| some PSP game and my connection went down. When I called the
| helpline they explained what happened and said they'd restore
| access once I confirmed I'd deleted the downloaded file.
| RustyRoss wrote:
| Lol. Did they force you to pinky swear that you'd deleted it?
| bombcar wrote:
| In my experience they're very careful about what you _say_ so
| that the recording allows them to say you did what was
| needed.
|
| This is assuming you didn't answer for "your little brother",
| etc.
| nekusar wrote:
| I have to pay property tax forever for a house I supposedly own.
| If I dont pay that, the government sues and takes my house.
| Basically I never actually own my house.
|
| (Of course, we have "Evil Communist China" where there is no
| property tax, and people own their homes and can live there. Id
| argue they're more free than we are.)
|
| But copyrights and patents and trademarks? There's no tax on
| those "properties". And gee, companies are the ones to likely own
| these properties, not individuals.
| megaman821 wrote:
| What? You pay property tax because local services schools,
| streets, police and fire fighters need to be funded. Having a
| property in the area is a pretty great proxy for using some of
| these services, hence the property tax.
| nekusar wrote:
| I was expecting that as a response.
|
| There is no reason why tax has to be done as property tax.
| Property tax demeans actual ownership of a place for us to
| live. (And why the hell do corporations get away with no tax
| on intellectual property, or even pay on profits, whereas we
| humans pay on revenue and property?)
|
| Worse yet, property taxes also enshrine the idea that the
| community's schools in poor areas deserve poor education. Do
| children in poor areas deserve poor education? Cause that's
| how you end up with "great and slum schools".
|
| And the police in my area? Its sheriffs. And meh. I dont want
| them to keep getting military playthings.
|
| Street? That's what gas tax and EV tax is for. And those
| built in with gas tax funds per gallon, aka use tax. Or
| vehicle registration tax.
|
| Fire fighters? We have volunteer fire fighters.
|
| I'm seeing a whole lot of tax and tax and tax, and shit for
| return on this forced investment. And property tax HAS had
| people end up homeless. 1 family homeless due to property tax
| is 1 too many.
| mmahd7456 wrote:
| Volunteer firefighters, public schools, and police/sheriffs
| still need equipment and facilities. Whether you call it
| property tax or "public services" tax, it amounts to the
| same thing. The community needs a way to fund the shared
| community services, and there has to be some sort of metric
| that determines how much each citizen contributes to the
| fund.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| First of all, I'm a Georgist, so I think you should be allowed
| to own your house, but rent the land indefinitely (and freely
| transfer your interest in renting the land).
|
| I'd like to see how free someone in China feels if they put up
| a Winnie The Pooh yard-sign (which I can do freely in the US,
| despite Disney owning the copyright for the likeness that I
| would use).
| nashashmi wrote:
| If sony equipment was used in facilitating the copyright
| violation, would that make Sony liable?
| Jolter wrote:
| That was already decided in an old case about Betamax
| recorders, quoted on the front page of the linked article.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Per this ruling, only if Sony had intent to facilitate
| copyright violation by making the equipment.
| djoldman wrote:
| For those like myself who wanted context:
|
| > Cox Communications v. Sony Music, 607 U.S.___ (2026), was a
| United States Supreme Court case regarding the liability of an
| internet service provider for its subscribers engaging in
| copyright infringement.
|
| > Cox Communications was sued by multiple music labels for lax
| enforcement of its users engaged in sharing the labels'
| copyrighted music, arging Cox finacially benefitted from these
| users. A jury trial found Cox to be liable. On appeal to the
| Fourth Circuit, the court dismissed findings that Cox engaged in
| vicarious infringment, but held that Cox was still liable for
| contributory infringement, with Cox potentially owing several
| million dollars to the labels.
|
| > In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court found that Cox
| Communication was not contributorily liable for the actions of
| its users, reversing the Fourth's decision.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox_Communications,_Inc._v._So...
| jetrink wrote:
| Hilariously (and appropriately), the decision cites _Sony Corp.
| of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc._ , also known as the
| "Betamax case."
|
| > (a) "The Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable
| for infringement committed by another." Sony Corp. of America v.
| Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417, 434.
|
| > In Sony, copyright owners sued the maker and the retailers of
| the Betamax video tape recorder. Id., at 422. The tape recorder
| could be used to record copyrighted television programs for later
| personal viewing, which would not constitute infringement. Id.,
| at 449. On the other hand, it could also be used to reproduce and
| sell copyrighted television programming, which would constitute
| infringement. Ibid. The lower court found the Betamax maker
| liable because the tape recorder was "not suitable for any
| substantial noninfringing use" and infringement "was either the
| most conspicuous use or the major use of the Betamax product."
| Id., at 428 (internal quotation marks omitted). This Court
| reversed, concluding that "[t]he Betamax is . . . capable of
| substantial noninfringing uses"--like personal use--so "sale of
| such equipment to the general public does not constitute
| contributory infringement." Id., at 456.
| purpleflame1257 wrote:
| They were right. I never sold a taped VCR, but my parents used
| it to time shift Saturday morning cartoons every week.
| nine_k wrote:
| Time shifting for personal use is expressly legal (making a
| personal copy). It was also an early form of ad-blocking,
| because a VHS recorder could stop recording at a set time,
| thus skip a block of commercials, and then continue. There
| were suits about that, too.
| da_chicken wrote:
| The Betamax case that GP mentions is the same case that
| established that time-shifting is not copyright
| infringment. The law and courts were previously both mute
| on the subject.
| frenchtoast8 wrote:
| > The lower court found the Betamax maker liable because the
| tape recorder was "not suitable for any substantial
| noninfringing use" and infringement "was either the most
| conspicuous use or the major use of the Betamax product."
|
| I don't know anyone who sold television recordings, it was
| always for personal use. How could the lower court get this so
| wrong? Was this just one uninformed judge? Or was this actually
| less certain at the time?
| lvspiff wrote:
| I had a relative who setup a kinda "blockbuster" type service
| recording things and offering them out for rental. It really
| took off for VHS when he got HBO and recorded movies and then
| rented those. It wasnt a very lucrative hustle but it was an
| instance of what they didnt want to have happen
| frenchtoast8 wrote:
| Absolutely this happened, but would you say that was the
| primary use case of the recording capabilities?
|
| I'm trying to understand how a judge would say that the
| only practical use of backups were copyright infringement,
| since that is completely contrary to both my experiences
| and what I believe to be common sense. If the answer to my
| confusion is that this actually was the major use case and
| my experiences were rare, then that's fine. Otherwise, I
| can't help believe this is yet another case in recent
| history where judges are completely backwards on
| technological understanding, or maybe even under influence
| from copyright holders.
| wat10000 wrote:
| This is the case that determined that recording TV
| broadcasts for your own personal use was not copyright
| infringement. They understood what the tech was used for,
| but they didn't know that this use was non-infringing
| until they made that decision.
| nine_k wrote:
| I suppose that selling is not necessary, distribution is.
| Record a movie off cable TV, share with your friends, and lo
| and behold, they're not going to buy the licensed VHS tape!
| And maybe even not going to subscribe to cable TV! Losses,
| losses everywhere.
| dhosek wrote:
| I remember in 1980, when our school got a VCR and
| television (on a cart to allow it to be moved from one
| classroom to another). one of my teachers said that she
| wasn't allowed to record something off the air at home and
| then show it in the classroom.
| pavon wrote:
| The Ninth Circuit court of appeals understood correctly what
| the primary use of Betamax would be, but they believed that
| personal home recording was not fair use, and was thus
| copyright infringement. They interpreted the law as only
| allowing libraries to record TV or radio broadcasts.
|
| The Supreme Court ruling for this case found that time-
| shifting was fair use, but only by a narrow 5-4 margin. Fair
| use could have gone in a completely different direction over
| the last 40 years if just one judge had voted differently on
| Betamax.
| bombcar wrote:
| We have to remember that at the time of the decision, there
| really wasn't any source of things _to copy_ with a Betamax
| recording device besides commercial broadcast TV and other
| copyrighted materials.
|
| Camcorders and such devices where you could make _your own_
| content were very rare, if available at all.
| bahmboo wrote:
| This speaks to first principles. I don't want judges making
| law - and any good judge doesn't want to make law. Laws are
| from elected legislatures. Of course this is all wishful
| thinking.
| autoexec wrote:
| If a judge had ruled differently in the Betamax case,
| we'd still have the ability to vote in representatives
| who'd enact a law that explicitly gave us the right to
| record for personal use. Judges should only have power to
| decide what a law means in situations where it's not
| already clear how or if the law applies.
| WarmWash wrote:
| Given that that judgement was made in 1981, it's possible
| that the judges (who were likely a bunch of depression era
| old dudes) had zero knowledge or exposure, and had never even
| thought much about, personal video recording before a bunch
| of lawyers tried to explain it to them during the case.
|
| We have see this happen repeatedly with modern tech cases.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| Even complete legal novices like me know about the
| Sony/Betamax case, FWIW. It would shock me if a judge
| ruling on copyright implications of a technology didn't
| know about it.
| fragmede wrote:
| Judges asking things that are obvious to us make for great
| headlines and quotes, like "what is a website?" or "what is
| an API?" and "shows" how out of touch they are, but like a
| judge (trying to) define pornography, making sure the
| plaintiff, the defendant, and the judge are on the same
| page seems to me (I am not a lawyer) just good procedure.
| First everyone has to agree on what a website or an API is
| before passing judgment on legal matters concerning them
| that all parties will abide by.
| wildzzz wrote:
| I doubt that. Home video recording, while a new thing in
| 1981, was not substantially different from making personal
| mixtapes on tape from radio or vinyl records which had been
| popular for decades. My grandfather had dozens of 4 track
| mixtape reels he made in the 60s. You could even go further
| back and say it wasn't any different than taking a photo of
| artwork for personal use. You didn't have to be that young
| in 1981 to understand what home video recording is.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > How could the lower court get this so wrong?
|
| There are no standards for lower court judges. They
| frequently do things that are grossly illegal.
|
| Here's a US lower court judge who spontaneously ordered that
| a child's name be changed because of the judge's religious
| beliefs: https://volokh.com/2013/08/12/judge-orders-that-
| childs-name-...
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > I don't know anyone who sold television recordings, it was
| always for personal use.
|
| The claim was that recording for personal use was still
| copyright infringement
| GolfPopper wrote:
| In the late 80s and early 90s there was a great deal of
| blatantly pirated SF, Fantasy, and Anime videotapes for sale
| at conventions, typically recorded from OTA, satellite, or
| cable for Western stuff. Anime was typically better quality,
| copied from Japanese originals with fan dubs added. Some of
| it was "at cost" where you were paying other fans for the
| their time, equipment, and the tape. Others were more
| obviously for-profit, with higher prices and sometimes better
| quality.
|
| To be clear, this was the only way to get most of the stuff
| being traded and sold. TV shows or films with no VHS release,
| or anime with no official dub or American format release.
| ww520 wrote:
| This is huge. Sony is trying to make Cox into law enforcement to
| do their biddings. The Supreme Court struck that down.
| maxwg wrote:
| > Holding Cox liable merely for failing to terminate Internet
| service to infringing accounts
|
| Imagine giving the power to rightsholders to terminate anyone's
| internet service with e.g, a DMCA takedown. I'm sure that won't
| be abused at all, and is a very necessary step to protecting
| "artists"
| dmvjs wrote:
| so just ask again tomorrow?
| kccqzy wrote:
| And you waste lawyer fees just to see your petition for the
| writ of certiorari denied. Most petitions are denied.
| doomboiardee wrote:
| I wonder if OpenAI, et.al were eagerly awaiting this verdict
| because once an ISP is liable...well I'm sure you can extrapolate
| from there.
| elicash wrote:
| There are important factual differences compared to the
| challenges against OpenAI, but I think yes this decision does
| ultimately offer them _some_ new legal protection against
| whatever _customers_ decide to do with their tools.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Ok while superficially great news but the supreme cynic in me is
| starting to think: what if the RIAA et al go to ISPs and saying
| they will pay them to continue monitoring this stuff and if they
| bring them to court, sue them and win they will give them a cut
| of the winnings? Would something like this even be financially
| feasible i.e. a profit motive inserted somewhere into the
| equation that ISPs would continue monitoring torrent activity?
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Would something like this even be financially feasible
|
| No.
|
| The entire reason they went after Cox is because cox has deep
| pockets and there was a possibility that Cox would just settle
| and work with them rather than fighting this all the way to the
| supreme court.
|
| The problem sony has is the maximum money they can claim from
| an individual is just way less than what they can get from a
| business. Almost certainly enough to justify the legal fees.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > what if the RIAA et al go to ISPs and saying they will pay
| them to continue monitoring this stuff and if they bring them
| to court, sue them and win they will give them a cut of the
| winnings?
|
| This is not a profitable business for anyone but low-level
| scumbags who are also lawyers (so they do not have to pay for
| lawyers.)
|
| Related, the music industry loses not a dime to piracy. If all
| piracy stopped tomorrow, they wouldn't likely make an
| additional cent. Which means that all money they spend to fight
| piracy is a loss - which is why they tried to make examples out
| of people and publicize it i.e. if we will go after this poor
| single mom, we will certainly go after you. But they would not
| go after you, because they're not going to spend that kind of
| money.
|
| Which is the reason for going after ISPs and search engines, to
| make it _their responsibility._ Meaning that they would have to
| pay for the monitoring, they would be cutting off people 's
| internet (which is almost scarier than a copyright violation
| suit in the age of monopoly and blacklists.) The RIAA could
| just sit back and spend nothing, just send lists of IPs to ISPs
| to be cut off, and watch piracy disappear. With the shield of a
| SCOTUS judgement, ISPs could cut off internet as quickly as
| youtube bans for DMCA, with no consequences.
|
| The situation now is that they can go after individuals, but
| nobody is obligated to help. It's all on their dime.
| shmerl wrote:
| If anyone wonders, that's a good result. Sony was in the wrong
| here.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| A rare W for Cox here.
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