Tech Firms Aim to Change Copyright Act

Tech Firms Aim to Change Copyright Act (washingtonpost.com - registration required)

This is something we talked about in Cyberlaw class. There's no way that we should hold ISP's liable for the bits and packets that flow over their networks any more than we should hold the U.S. government responsible for illegal drugs that flow over the highways. No one is suing the government for creating the interstate system. No one is arguing that the government is liable for creating something that facilitates the trafficking in illegal goods. Why on Earth is someone arguing that ISP's should be held liable for individual filesharers passing around a copy of... I dunno... Gigli. (THAT would explain those horrible box office numbers, right? Why, oh why can't Ben Affleck pick a halfway decent project?!? Matt Damon can do it. What's Ben's problem?)

It's my understanding that internet transmissions are broken down into packets, and then the packets flow out over the network and are reassembled at their destination for viewing on the computer. Let's break this down. I want to send my buddy a copy of Moby Dick, which I downloaded from Gutenberg. I take it, and break it out into individual words. The Gutenberg text of Moby Dick is 419 pages, 215,643 words. I take 215,643 of my good friends and neighbors, and give each of them a word, and my buddy's address, and they all traipse over and deliver their words. My friend then re-assembles the words into Moby Dick. All perfectly legal, because Moby Dick is in the public domain. No problems.

Let's say that I want to do the same thing with David Drake's "The Tank Lords" © 1997. I break it down into words - 118,101 of them - and send my friends and neighbors out again. Now then, the individual words aren't copyrightable. You can't copyright "the" or "tank" or "lords". The individuals distributing the individual words are not breaking the law. I am by sending a copy of a copyrighted work to my friend. But the individual distributors are not.

Let's take it one step further. Let's say that instead of breaking it into words and giving everyone a word on a piece of paper, I put them all in envelopes, and the individuals have no idea what's written on there? That's analogous to what happens when an ISP passes on a packet of information. They don't know what's in the packet, and to be honest, even if they could look at the one packet, it means nothing without the rest of them. ISP's should not be held liable for the copyright infringement of their end users. Nail the end users. Figuratively speaking, put their stuffed heads on a wall. But don't go after the ISP's. They are not responsible for it any more than those friends of mine and David Drake's book or any more than the U.S. government is with the interstate system and drug trafficking. Selah.