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eBay Beats DMCA
pgrote writes "eBay won a court battle that brought to light a key provision of the DCMA. The judge says, "Although it may facilitate the sale of pirated material, "eBay does not have the right and ability to control such activity," a standard required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the judge wrote." So does that mean that the P2P file trading programs are legal since the pirating occurs off the sites? This is could be a very important precedent. " In talking to some lawyer friends, their perspective on part of the Napster case was that by being very difficult in the beginning, Napster almost doomed itself. But, as always, IANAL ? .
Does this mean they can start allowing import games to be sold? I've bid on a number of Japanese import Dreamcast and Saturn games, where the auction has subsequently been pulled. Turns out that Sega demanded that eBay pull any such auctions, suggesting that they "promote piracy", although afaik there is no law prohibiting the resale of import games.
The problem, of course, being that you have still suffered an interruption of a service you pay for, because some copyright owner said you were doing illegal things. The source of the problem is that the law asserts good faith from the copyright holders, and relies on them to not make any errors. When an error *does* occur, then the customer ends up being branded a criminal without having any kind of chance to challenge this verdict BEFORE his access is terminated.
Presumption of innocence does not work for companies, and the DMCA seems to openly take advantage of that fact to try to scare people who might want to violate copyrights: "We need proof to send you to jail, but we don't need any to cut your internet access..."
"I remember Y1K, every abacus had to get another bead"
EBay provides auctions, not internet service, so they are an "ASP", not an "ISP".
When a judge dismisses a case, they do so based on legal reasoning that does set a precedent. This can come in one of two forms. A case can be dismissed for failure to state a claim for which the court has the power to provide a remedy, or it can be concluded on "summary judgement" which means that there were no disputed material facts requiring a trial so that the question is one of pure law. Both types of order are usually supported with a written opinion.
I cannot tell which actually occured and the article doesn't link to the opinion.