Car makers also are required to make certain safety mechanisms on their products. Again, these items protect the USER of their products.
The list goes on. Household appliances, power tools, sporting equipment... just think about all the items that are made that include a simple safety mechanism to protect the person who uses these items.
The supreme court came down with a ruling this week on the Grokster case. (torrent) In a nutshell it says that computer software makers, if they do no include a mechanism that protects owners of all copy-written material, they are liable. They call it "inducing copyright infringement"
I think there is a contradiction of legal terms here.
A gun owner can buy a gun and use it responsibly. There is no problem there. But if they choose to use it to an ends that is illegal... they as an individual are responsible for their actions. The gun manufacturer is not required to build a gun that may or may not work based on a legal document thats purpose is to protect a victim of a gun injury. In doing so the gun manufacturer would be doing nothing more than making their product vulnerable to natural competition.
Computer software is susceptible to natural competition on a global scale. The new legal precedent that has been set dictates that software developers must now protect everybody that might be at risk by users that choose to use software illegally. So they might not enable features that would open them up to (now legal) law suits coming from copyright holders. Their software in turn will not be competitive in a global market due to the fact that foreign developers will have no legal limitations.
It comes down to this...
When a user of a gun chooses to make use of that gun illegally, the USER takes the responsibility.
When a user of software chooses to make use of the software illegally, BOTH the user AND the developer are responsible.
still many questions.
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