Following news of Hollywood’s assault on p2p, Ed Felten wonders, a propos of hypothetical litigation over BitTorrent,
It’s hard to see how one could sue BitTorrent. How do you sue a communications protocol? You can sue the person who designed the protocol, but the protocol itself can’t be undesigned. Nor can the technical community unlearn the lessons it has learned.
There’s some Candyman-like idealism in that comment, even though it sounds right. But I don’t think that anyone would need to sue a protocol, if shutting down BitTorrent were really the goal.
3 responses so far ↓
1 madisonian theory: on law, society, and technology » On Suing Networks // Dec 20, 2004 at 7:43 pm
[...] s on his earlier post about the challenges of suing communications protocols, which drew a skeptical (but also somewhat unfair) reply from me, below. He [...]
2 Freedom to Tinker // Dec 20, 2004 at 11:08 am
When Is a “Network” Not a Network?
Last week, in response to the MPAA lawsuits against BitTorrent trackers, I wrote that it’s impossible to sue BitTorrent itself, because it is nothing but a communications protocol. Michael Madison was skeptical, which was a fair response given what li…
3 Not Quite Random // Dec 20, 2004 at 12:42 pm
BitTorret and the MPAA
Ed Felten at Freedom to
Tinker has a couple of interesting
articles and links
regarding BitTorrent
and the MPAA’s recent lawsuits.