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.
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  • identicon
    thatguy, 27 Jul 2005 @ 12:06pm

    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.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      pixelpusher220, 27 Jul 2005 @ 12:48pm

      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.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      alex, 27 Jul 2005 @ 4:36pm

      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.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Mike (profile), 27 Jul 2005 @ 5:17pm

        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.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      SAmmydaddy, 28 Jul 2005 @ 8:38am

      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.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Christopher, 27 Jul 2005 @ 1:01pm

    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...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Chris Wuestefeld, 27 Jul 2005 @ 2:04pm

    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?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    whit, 28 Jul 2005 @ 5:29am

    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)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 28 Jul 2005 @ 2:03pm

      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...

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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