Supreme Court wants US input on whether ISPs should be liable for users’ piracy

BMW should be liable for its drivers not using their turn signals.

Gun companies should be liable for people being shot with their guns
- Gun insurance... Should be a thing... It's the single most compelling thing I have heard someone say about guns and wonder why it wasn't a thing... Insurance companies don't fuck around.
- This but unironically
- If guns had a function besides murder, that would be a bad argument, but they don't. Defense is just the threat of murder.
  
  Shooting at the range for fun, I suppose, but if people are actually serious about that they'd want to store their guns there because there's no need for them anywhere else.
The relationship is different though, BMW is not a service provider.

A better analogy would be the phone company. Is it their job to monitor their customers conversation and determine the legality of what is being said?
- I am sure BMW's TOS has a sentence in there somewhere that they are your daddy once you sign up and this is binding forever. Looks like that means they are a service provider for life.
  
  Also.. isn't a subscription for heated seats means they provide a live service that we need to pay regularly to maintain?
- That is a better analogy, but critically, phone lines are regulated as Title II common carrier utilities, but internet connections are not.
  
  Given how Trump's previous FCC pick, Ajit Pai, killed net neutrality, I expect Trump's new pick, and his SCOTUS to pick whatever benefits Comcast the most.
  
  Not blaming the ISP would give the net neutrality case too much credence. I think Comcast would rather be "required" to do deep packet inspection on all their users to look for "illegal behavior" (among other things).
- BMW provides the service of being able to buy and use their product. The service of a gun manufacturer is providing you with a murder weapon (yes, it also can be used for sports). The service of a grocery store is providing you with a place to buy your groceries (and in the US also guns). Why is it different? Whether the product is a connection to the internet or a car, both companies provide a service for money.
- No that's the NSA's job
I could see the Supreme Court rejecting this based on that idea... If you blame the manufacturer, that's going to open up all manner of gun lawsuits, ammunition lawsuits, etc.
Highways are responsible for car crashes.

The Supreme Court just publicly called for Congress to weigh in on who is responsible?

What is this, solicitation of bribes? Because these big companies are going to try to swing the vote with cash.

What this actually is: They have Verizon bribing them and the MPAA bribing them. They don't want to shrug either one of them off, so they'll let the United States citizens make the choice, you know, in good faith in all, so the next 20 years of bullahit they pull that's against public opinion, They can just point back to this one time

Forced to terminate user who are accused of copyright infringement.

No way that can be abused.

It sounds to me like the founding fathers didn't mention software piracy because they felt it shouldn't be regulated by the government.

It will be interesting to see them justify why ISPs are responsible for user's piracy, but gun companies aren't responsible for users' murders.

It's not in the Constitution so they can't make a law about it. At least, that's what all the conservative 2A guys keep yelling at me?

Yeah what the hell are they asking for views for. Their job is to say, this literature does or does not say this can or can't happen.

Then the legislative branch should be writing what they believe the people they represent want. In reality they will bend it to fit what their lobbyists want, by why on earth is the judicial branch inquiring as to what the people want?

It's like an admission of guilt to not judging without bias. Thereby all of their judgements would be invalid....

ISPs are companies, the US wouldn't hold them liable for their own crimes, much less their customer's...

The blame will just trickle down, so what's it gonna be, us or them?

Ai isn't a thing we had in the Napster days. They could jot down all of Mullvad and Nord's ips and start sniffing. Once gigabytes turn into terabytes within a day, they've got a few suspects.

Is it right? Hell no. Would they do it? You bet.

just in case Ars Technica has to remove it someday (perhaps for licensing reaasons? 😭), i am pasting a screenshot here of the excellent image illustrating this article:

screenshot of article headline, illustrated by a photograph of a person with an eye patch featuring a skull and crossbones, wearing a red scarf underneath a bicorne pirate hat (also featuring a skull and crossbones), hunched over a laptop, with an optical disc in their mouth. there is another disc leaning on the side of the laptop, and a spindle of discs under their arm.

I'm sure AWS and Azure would like a word

Maybe content holders should be responsible for enshittifying their services.. I shouldn't have to go to 4 different apps to watch what I want, or try to figure out which service carries an obscure title I like

My ISP sends letters when they know I'm pirating. I tested those waters early.

So, given that proof... they have no idea I'm still pirating, and never stopped.

Love the Stock photo

Fire up the net neutrality comment bots again!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solicitor_General_of_the_United_States

For anyone who thinks this is significant or controversial.