|
Thursday, June 30, 2005Grokster thoughts:Plainly illegal: Hey kids! Tired of working at McDonald's to pay for your car? Buy Acme locksmithing tools and you'll never want for a car again! Questionable: Hey kids! Impress your friends and awe your enemies! Buy Acme locksmithing tools and you'll be able to lock and unlock any car on the block! And if your parents won't lend you the car, you'll still have wheels. Questionable but better: Hey kids! Tired of working at McDonald's to pay for your car? Pay for your car by helping others with theirs. Acme locksmithing tools will let you help out friends and neighbors and pick up nice tips for a valuable service. And you can borrow the car Saturday night before you ask dad. In the first case, the product is being hawked as a tool for law breaking. In the second, the product is offered for probably illegal but less damning purposes. In the third, a legitimate product is offered, but with a wink at a technically illegal but time honored practice - borrowing the car without asking. The Grokster ruling, as I understand it, pretty much said that if the product was widely used for illegal practices, the producer was liable regardless of intended use. But Thomas and a few others said that if Grokster ran an ad closer to the third, instead of the first, the case could have been different. I'm not clear on how far the Grokster ads go, but contemplating the implications of Grokster alongside the locksmithing analogy (don't remember where I came across it, probably Volokh). I wonder: If you crack up your car and the people inside, can you sue Pontiac? After all, the "Get in your Pontiac and drive" campaign, while featuring an asterisk about a professional driver on a closed track, pretty much implies that the thing you do with your Pontiac is let 'er rip. What about the coy ads (don't remember the make) about how fast a certain luxury car can go, not that you should, but isn't it nice to know that you can? Both these marketing campaigns suggest that it's natural to want to say the hell with speed limits and have some fun. This attitude toward speeding (how many letters to the editor blame the crash on the guy who was only going 70 when everyone knows you go 90 through that stretch...) encourages lawlessness and dangerous driving conditions that impact life, property and expenditures for public services (cleanup crews, fire trucks, ambulances, etc). What's the difference between saying, "Download all the free music you want and stick it to the record companies* - * Just kidding, only download legal stuff" and "Drive as fast you need to to feel wild, crazy and free* - * If you're a professional driver on a closed track"? And based on the loosest reading of Grokster, is GM liable for speeding deaths because they make a product with which most of its customers speed? P.S. Don't tell any plaintiff's lawyers about this post; I'm not sure they wouldn't try it. 
posted by gbarto at 6:25 PM |
Archives
|
Day By Day© by Chris Muir.Old TurkeyBlog here.
