Sunday, April 19, 2009

Pirate Bay vrs. Firearms

I wanted to make a comparison here, between the Pirate Bay and Gun Manufacturers.

First, the gun manufacturers:
“Traditionally, gun manufacturers have escaped responsibility when it comes to the criminal use of their products,” says Nation. “The legal system essentially presumes that criminal activity is not to be expected and that manufacturers have no control over the use of their products.” - Source: http://www3.lehigh.edu/News/CBEnews_story.asp?iNewsID=2664
Essentially, courts have ruled that the distributors of guns and the facilitators of distribution are not responsible for what the guns are used for.

Now let's look at the Pirate Bay verdict:
“The court has found that by using Pirate Bay’s services there has been file-sharing of music, films and computer games to the extent the prosecutor has stated in his case,” said the district court. “This file-sharing constitutes an unlawful transfer to the public of copyrighted performances.” - Source: http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-trial-the-verdict-090417/
Courts have ruled in this case that the facilitators of distribution of information are responsible for copyright infringement.

So on the one hand, people who distribute guns are not responsible when those guns are used to kill people, but people who distribute information are responsible for when people use their distribution services to infringe copyright.

According to the courts, facilitating death is not the facilitator's problem, but facilitating copyright infringement is.

I think this is something that people might want to think about.