Re: Google's unofficial torrent search

[David M Chess <chess () us ibm com>]

Steve Pirk:

> To me, the win for the RIAA means that anyone can sue anyone who offers 
> any type of search results that may link to coyrighted material. e.g. if 
I 
> create a copyrighted article, post it on my site telling people not to 
> read it, I could sue google, yahoo or even the RIAA if they happen to 
> display a link to my page in _any_ search results.
>
> Am I reading the verdict wrong?

Slightly wrong, I think, in some sense.  Important to remember that the 
law is not like code, the law is more like your Dad.  If Dad says "don't 
touch my tools!", you're in trouble if you play with them even if you were 
wearing gloves so you never touched them, but your little sister isn't in 
trouble even though she *clearly* touched the socket wrench when you poked 
her in the leg with it.  :)

I can't find the actual text of the decision, but my impression from the 
coverage is that it was Pirate Bay's general attitude and history (and 
reason for living) of encouraging the violation of copyright that made the 
judge see them as the bad guys, and find them guilty.  It's really hard to 
imagine a judge finding Google or any other general search engine guilty 
in the same way, because there will not be the same evidence that the 
general search engine was operated with the intent of helping people 
violate copyright.  If it arguably has that as a side-effect, that's 
probably not enough for a guilty verdict.  From some of the coverage I 
gather that the prosecution cited prior cases where accomplices of various 
kinds were convicted, even though they had not done anything illegal 
themselves, but just helped the primary malefactor.  The argument would 
then be that Pirate Bay was intentionally doing something that they had 
good reason to know would be of primary benefit to copyright infringers, 
whereas Google and other general search engines have a primary purpose 
that has nothing to do with that, although it might help copyright 
infringers as a side effect.

The law is usually pretty mushy like that.  :)

DC

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