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 ^? .

Comments

eBay is and old idea on new Tech, not so with Nap

[Uttles]

The reason the judge ruled this way in this case as opposed to the way the judge ruled in the Napster case is simple: eBay is online auctions, and auctions have been around forever. People understand how they work and they are comfortable making decisions about them. On the other hand, Napster, P2P, and mp3's are all relatively new technologies that judges don't know the first thing about, and are not comfortable with at all. Auctions have just as much control over who gets what as P2P does (and that's very little) and so the two services really should be treated similarly, but it won't happen.