Slashdot Mirror
Free Internet Porn Is Legal, Says California Appeals Court
wdef writes with the lead from a story that may bring you a big sigh of relief: "Free internet porn is not illegal. Nor is it unfairly competing with porn companies who'd rather you paid for your thrills, according to a California Appeals Court, which has dismissed a case against one free site, Redtube.com, as an unfair attack on free speech." Interestingly, this case was brought not by anyone objecting to pornography on moral grounds, but rather by a competitor who reasons that "free" is a hard price to compete with, unless it's against the law.
a million nerds rejoice!
My right hand might be busy
They basically argued that for something to be "free as in speech", it has to NOT be "free, as in beer".
There are plenty of other people who feel this way, like the **AAs, the BSA, the AAP etc.
It's time for big business to realize that capitalism does not require anyone to give you money for your offerings.
The first time I heard of this lawsuit was yesterday, and I was absolutely appalled at the audacity of the plaintiff to assert that someone providing free porn was illegally undercutting professional porn studios.
Jesus Christ, I'm glad this lawsuit decided turned out the way it did. Think of the precedent it would have set had the plaintiff won. The recording industry could sue indies who release their music under a Creative Commons license, claiming unfair competition. Same with the movie studios and sites like Vodo. Or companies that sell encyclopedias versus Wikipedia. Or hell, Microsoft and Linux.
From the complaint:
"The ubiquitous distribution of free adult videos through redtube.com has had a massive negative impact on the business model of adult website proprietors,. Now that consumers have the ability to watch high quality adult videos for free on redtube.com, fewer are making the choice to pay other adult website proprietors for the same content."
If you have a difficult time competing with free, that's your problem. You have no business whatsoever trying to get the government to interfere on your behalf.
because now my girlfriend won't get sued by a prostitute for doing it for free.
(I'm an AC, because everyone knows that people with accounts here don't have girlfriends)
It's worth noting here that this lawsuit happened only because of the California Unfair Practices Act, which is a remarkably bad piece of law. The "free porn" provided by Redtube was dumping of product below cost, an act which is considered illegal, not just "unfair" by the law. Not everyone will be able to count on free speech to defend their industry from the stagnating impositions of this law.
Anti-dumping laws are designed to prevent someone (who has the ability to make a high initial investment) from gaining a monopoly by selling product at a loss in order to drive competitors out of business. The intent of this, obviously, would be to gain a monopoly, then raise prices exorbitantly high and make back their original loss quickly. Then with their monopoly they would be fairly immune to up-coming competitors, since a high initial investment would then be required to enter the market, and the company dominating the market could simply drop their prices again to force small competitors to go bankrupt.
If you're profiting from it all along, you're not "dumping"... and if you do drive the higher-priced competition out of business and happen to gain a dominant position in the market, you still can't price-gouge anyway because if giving it away is a viable business option then there's no barrier to entry into the market. If you tried to gouge prices someone could just undercut you similarly.