Gun Makers Worthy Of Protection That Tech Isn't
from the hypocrisy-in-action dept
Sea Monkey Rodeo points out that President Bush’s spokesman says “The president believes that the manufacturer of a legal product should not be held liable for the criminal misuse of that product by others. We look at it from a standpoint of stopping lawsuit abuse.” Unfortunately he isn’t referring to the administration’s views of the Supreme Court’s Grokster decision, but rather legislation to protect gun manufacturers that’s before the Senate.
Comments on “Gun Makers Worthy Of Protection That Tech Isn't”
pretty simple
Let’s compare real quick…
Guns = Money made and protected under bill of rights.
Grokster = Money lost.
There really isn’t even a need to compare the fact that both have their legitimate uses. It simply doesn’t matter in a country like this. Period.
Re: pretty simple
P2P apps themselves aren’t liable, but if the makers of the app blatantly advertise you can do illegal things with their product, then yes they are liable.
If gun manufacturers are promoting their guns saying “Hey you can rob store and kill people with this beauty” then they’d be liable too.
Re: Re: pretty simple
I’m glad you beat me to making this point.
Re: pretty simple
It’s true — if you actually read the Grokster opinion, they didn’t throw out the Sony/Betamax case (which protected providers of VCRs from being sued for illegal copying). Rather, they saw that Grokster had done some egregious things to encourage piracy.
It’s completely different, and a reading of the actual court opinion will perhaps draw some fresh conclusions.
Re: Re: pretty simple
Yup. We know that the Grokster decision is based on the “inducement” angle (and have written about it a few times). Still, the standard for inducement is quite unclear, and that fuzzy definition makes this still problematic. You could make the case for inducement on either side of this debate. The issue, though, was that the statement does still suggest a double standard of sorts. In one case, there are situations where the tech can be blamed, but in the other, there apparently aren’t.
Re: pretty simple
You forgot to mention that the present goverment for the most part is trigger happy (war on terrorism)and majorly captoloisic. As you rightly said if they cannot profit from it or use it to gain support of the masses they can care less about it.
Actually that works fine...
…As soon as gun companies are found to be marketing to an audience who is using their products illegally, then there is an issue.
For example… Desert Eagles with spinner hubcap inspired bling on the loading mechanism… bullets that literaly have peoples names on them… Colt product doing a tie with Miller beer… Colt 45’s and Colt .45’s!
USvGrok wasn’t a win for anti sharing… unless a developer goes around saying things like “I think I should write software to scew the RIAA” and then they DO… well… stupidity SHOULD be punished anyway… (even if we all agree the rat bastards deserve it)
Rather than whining it to death we should look at it as an OPPURTUNITY… Use the laws we already have… Namely gun laws, it’s a great parallel… we shalt have the right to write and run software…
Cuts both ways
Since this site seems to favor file sharing (in many cases, anyway), can we assume that you also favor the putatively analogous protections for firearm manufacturers?
Re: Cuts both ways
The responsibility for misusing a product belongs on whoever misused that product. Period.
Regarding Inducement
Thanks for the link, Mike — I replied to a commenter who brought up the inducement question on the original post, but it’s worth mentioning here as well.
One of the things that I omitted from the post was a note regarding the fact that the inducement/promotion element of the Grokster decision immediately reminded me of the Navegar lawsuit some years ago.
Navegar, the manufacturer of the TEC9, ran ads that promoted the weapon’s “fingerprint resistant” coating and large capacity magazine; while a fair number of people felt that this constituted marketing to an audience that was using the products illegally, the courts did not agree. (Google: Navegar lawsuit)
Re: Regarding Inducement
Finger-print resistant does not mean that it doesn’t hold fingerprints, it means that the salts that are deposited with your sweat/oil will not eat into the gun…