Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

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.

Yes, but not demonstrated that that training is illegal.

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?

>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.

Per this ruling, only if Sony had intent to facilitate copyright violation by making the equipment.