Hold Technology Creators Liable?
from the who-can-you-sue? dept
Declan McCullough is looking at the question of whether or not creators of a technology should be held responsible for what others do with it. The main example, of course, is that the RIAA is blaming those who create file sharing tools for any copyright violations done with those tools. However, he goes through plenty of other examples of where this backwards reasoning shows up – and takes the basic argument out to the absurd level to prove a point. Basically, almost any technology can be used to facilitate “illegal” acts, so it should all be banned. A more interesting point, though, is that he expects Congress to step into the debate over file sharing – pointing out that the judge in the Grokster/Morpheus case suggested this is an issue that requires a legislative solution. Unfortunately, since Hollywood seems to own Congress these days, it’s exactly what might happen.
