Swedish Appeals Court Says Web Designer Is Responsible For Copyright Infringement On StudentBay
from the scorched-earth-policy dept
It's really amazing how fearful people who don't understand technology are of anyone who has any connection to file sharing, no matter how remote. Over in Sweden, an appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling absolving a web designer of any liability for designing the StudentBay -- a torrenting site for educational material -- and decided that because he designed the site, he must be liable for what users did on the site. This goes beyond secondary liability into some sort of weird tertiary liability. It already seems odd to blame the operators of the site for actions taken by its users, but now we're holding the graphic designers responsible too? It's a sort of scorched earth policy from people who don't seem to understand how the internet works, and who just seem to want to "destroy everything." Of course, the end result is that anyone with half a clue just thinks the judicial system is a complete joke. That doesn't seem useful for anyone.
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Filed Under: liability, scorched earth, sweden, web design
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So...
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Re: So...
In order for secondary liability to be triggered you would have to assist someone doing something criminal either in deed or by giving him/her advice.
Btw. this seems to have some similarities with how Peter Sunde was convicted in the TPB case.
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Seems like plain old secondary liability to me. He's liable as a contributory infringer if (1) he materially contributed to the infringement, and (2) he had knowledge of it. Sounds like he knowingly designed a website that was used to infringe. I don't ever understand your "they don't understand the internet!" argument. Seems like completely empty rhetoric, and you use it way too much. Someone set up a site on purpose so that people would use that site to infringe. Just because you don't like the fact that the law rightfully holds such people liable for the intended results of their actions, don't pretend like the judges are a bunch of idiots who don't understand the internet. They understand it well enough to spot a party who should be held liable for the actions they willingly chose to take.
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Re: Re: @ AC: "saying all gun manufacturers are secondary liable"
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Re: Re: Re: @ AC: "saying all gun manufacturers are secondary liable"
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Re: Re: Re: Re: @ AC: "saying all gun manufacturers are secondary liable"
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Re: Re: Re: @ AC: "saying all gun manufacturers are secondary liable"
The guy who built the H bomb....he knew the H bomb had one use, and that is to kill millions of people. Is he responsible for the deaths it caused? So that guy or group of people are mass murderers?
Compared to your theory where a guy who most likely got contracted to build a file sharing site (just an FYI, not all file sharing sites share infringing materials) he does so then gets called to court because the guy who contracted him now uses his code to run a site where "illegal" file sharing can possibly happen?
Ok, lets get the guy that created CDs, USB drives, hard drives, photo copiers, printing presses, etc.
OotB, you are just a moron, do us a favor for Christmas, shut up unless you have something to actually contribute, something that actually has some sort of solid ground to stand on. Seriously man, you are gonna get hurt.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: @ AC: "saying all gun manufacturers are secondary liable"
> responsible for the deaths it caused?
I don't think a hydrogen bomb has ever been used on anyone, so there are no deaths to be responsible for.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: @ AC: "saying all gun manufacturers are secondary liable"
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Re: Re: Re: @ AC: "saying all gun manufacturers are secondary liable"
Never heard of promotional shoots, Q&As, etc., that might require a setup that needs to see the whole screen or theatre area but is not intended to record the movie itself, huh? Figures.
"it's a specific installation that has SOLE purpose of infringing copyright."
If you ignore all the possible legal uses, all the uses must be illegal! Genius!
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No. I'm saying that a person who knowingly designs a website that exist for the primary purpose of facilitating mass infringement should be held accountable. This stuff isn't hard. You guys just pretend like it is.
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Guy who designs a torrent website knows that that website is used for copyright infringement and is responsible for those who infringe.
Guy who designs a gun knows that that gun is used to kill people, but is somehow not responsible for the deaths caused by that gun.
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You can speculate that he knew, but unless you have a source to cite, I don't see anything that indicates he knew the site would be used for any infringing uses at all.
Regardless, application secondary liability if he was in fact running the site still remains a pretty crazy idea. Criminal sanctions for someone who creates a perfectly legal website because someone uses it to infringe copyright seems very misguided and, if applied to everything else in the same way, would result in traffic engineers being convicted for helping bank robbers get away by providing roads.
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Go here: http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.484006/studentbay-doms-i-hovratten
Google Translate says "The Court of Appeal, however, that the man must have known that the purpose of studentbay.se were delinquent, and judge him because of probation and damages." The court must have noticed the "bay" name and the pirate ship emblem. Hmmm. This one's tough to crack.
So the court found that on the evidence he must have known that the site was for the purpose of causing infringement. It says he was profiting from it as well, charging "20 crowns" to join. So he doesn't seem at all innocent to me. Of course, Mike will defend this guy and pretend like what he did was OK and that it's really the world who just understand the internet. Hogwash. Pirate-apologism at its worst. Seriously.
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For this ruling to logically make sense, then the courts MUST, without exception, hold every person who has contributed to computers responsible for the actions of those who infringe copyright. Not just the graphic designers, but also the coders, the site operators, moderators, the ISPs, the electric company, the hardware manufacturers. Either they are ALL GUILTY or none of them are.
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I don't think Average Joe is an actual law student, I think he probably just played one on TV.
That would explain a lot, like, why does he shill so much in favor of Hollywood and the big Media Conglomerates.
Does this remind you of anything?
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A sterling example from Europe.
At some point, the "corporate veil" has to stop this nonsense. He was just a sub-contractor.
Criminalizing everyone that might have sold something to or provided some service to or been an employee of some criminal (who hasn't even been charged) is just fascist police state nonsense.
This is the logically absurd conclusion of stretching the law to criminalize as many people as possible.
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Let's see. Pirate is associated with infringement. Disney has a pirate themed franchise. Oh my god, it's so obvious. Disney is behind the Pirate Bay! They're pirating their own content for some nefarious purpose. It must be true. After all, I followed the strong legal evidence of word association to prove that Disney is guilty. Matlock couldn't have cracked this case any better.
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Quick to the Pirates Of The Caribbean website! They must be pirates - it's in their name and promos!
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Judging whether this person's actions should qualify as such is another matter.
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"Seems like plain old secondary liability to me"
Nigel
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> that was used to infringe.
Of course he knowingly designed a web site. How else does one design a web site? Web sites don't get designed by accident.
You might make more sense if you'd said he designed a web site knowing it would be used to infringe. That's still ridiculous as a matter of public policy and law, but at least it makes linguistic sense.
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> knowing and intending that it would be used
> to infringe. He designed it because of
> infringement, not in spite of it.
You might be saying that now, but that's not what you originally said.
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so when a gun is made, it isn't for the express purpose of shooting something then?
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It's the old "I'm only the piano player" defense.
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Re: It's the old "I'm only the piano player" defense.
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Hmmmmm....
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Tertiary Liability
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Didn't you hear?
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Re: Didn't you hear?
Each time a new story like this comes to light, people respect copyright less not more.
These copyright maximalist parasites are digging their own grave.
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get ebay too!
right?
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Re: get ebay too!
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/FTFY
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He was liable for the actions of whoever was on site, even though he had no way of knowing.
So if I go to a stadium and I steal, or vandalize, or sell drugs, or murder a protected species, while up in the stands during an event, based on how the law has been interpreted from an online liability standpoint, could we then argue that the stadium owners are liable for my actions because they didn't prevent it?
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Cash'n MAFIAA Pay Checks
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