Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music • Hacker News Board

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#91

Post by alistairSH » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

Maken wrote: post #60

mannyv wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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".

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].

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#92

Post by Arainach » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

acomjean wrote: post #49

prepend wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

> 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.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#93

Post by autoexec » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

mannyv wrote: post #24

thot_experiment wrote: post #9

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.

[flagged]

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.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#94

Post by freedomben » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #89

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are around ~500 millions guns in the US according to a quick Google. There's a lot of crime in the US, but I doubt even 1% of the guns have been used in a crime. Also you can buy a gun and just shoot it at a range.

> I doubt even 1% of the guns have been used in a crime. Guns are used to inflict harm. Why would the arms producer not be held accountable? He produced the gun. The gun is the tool to cause harm, injury, potentially death. If service providers are held responsible for users, arms producers must also be held accountable. Financially too.

Just curious, do you feel the same way about knife manufacturers? Or automotive makers?

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#95

Post by supertrope » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

bickfordb wrote: post #75

I wonder what effect this will have on file sharing services like Megaupload?

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.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#96

Post by burningChrome » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #89

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are around ~500 millions guns in the US according to a quick Google. There's a lot of crime in the US, but I doubt even 1% of the guns have been used in a crime. Also you can buy a gun and just shoot it at a range.

> I doubt even 1% of the guns have been used in a crime. Guns are used to inflict harm. Why would the arms producer not be held accountable? He produced the gun. The gun is the tool to cause harm, injury, potentially death. If service providers are held responsible for users, arms producers must also be held accountable. Financially too.

>> Guns are used to inflict harm. Why would the arms producer not be held accountable?

Notably by criminals who have never, and will never abide by the copious amounts of federal and state laws that currently regulate how people are able to use guns. If that is the case, how does holding manufacturers responsible for something completely out of their control make sense?

Its like saying car manufacturers should be responsible for drunk drivers who kill others in collisions. Because they should've known their cars would be used by someone to do something dangerous and against the law?

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#97

Post by rimunroe » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

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.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#98

Post by bit-anarchist » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

thmsths wrote: post #23

ronsor wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#99

Post by JCTheDenthog » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 5:19 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #89

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are around ~500 millions guns in the US according to a quick Google. There's a lot of crime in the US, but I doubt even 1% of the guns have been used in a crime. Also you can buy a gun and just shoot it at a range.

> I doubt even 1% of the guns have been used in a crime. Guns are used to inflict harm. Why would the arms producer not be held accountable? He produced the gun. The gun is the tool to cause harm, injury, potentially death. If service providers are held responsible for users, arms producers must also be held accountable. Financially too.

By that logic Toyota should be liable if someone uses a Tacoma to ram a crowd.

Re: Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music

#100

Post by autoexec » Wed, Mar 25, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #21

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 t…

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.