Contributory Infringement
Posted on March 10th, 2005 by JTkPosted in Buddy Sites |
JD has a great article over on DRM Blog about something called “Contributory Infringement“. Evidently it refers to the action of one person either allowing or causing another person to infringe the rights of a third person.
This issue was decided once upon a time back in the day with the “Betamax Decision” (Sony Corp v. Universal City Studios). In a nutshell since Sony sold the Betamax VCR Universal sued them on the grounds that since consumers could use the Betamax to record Universal’s copyrighted works Sony was liable.
Of course the court had the good sense to rule that just because some one could use the Betamax for nefarious purposes it didn’t mean that Sony was liable for that use.
All that may be changing with this here Grokster case and if so you should be prepared to lose quite a bit of your heretofore “fair use” rights. If Grokster is ruled illegal because it abets Contributory Infringement what’s next? The iPod? Windows? The Net?
The bigger picture in my mind is the need for a Reasonable Intellectual Property Policy.