| mav1178 |
04-24-2015 01:58 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tromatic
(Post 2225257)
Except that this will be on a Fed level and manufacturers will be hitting every software and hardware tuner with DMCA cease-and-desist claims. GM even wants to make the act of copying/reading a ROM a violation.
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... and it'll end up in front of the Supreme Court.
If the ECU is a copyright, then what happens when someone wants to sell a car? Will that copyright need additional paperwork to transfer?
I don't think this will end anytime soon nor will it have any effect on us for a long time.
From a different source, I found this to be surprisingly relevant to the issue at hand:
http://keionline.org/node/1574
Justice Breyer commenting during a Supreme Court case (Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons) in 2012:
Quote:
JUSTICE BREYER: -- imagine Toyota, all right? Millions sold in the United States. They have copyrighted sound systems. They have copyrighted GPS systems. When people buy them in America, they think they're going to be able to resell them.
Now, under your reading -- now, this is one of their horribles, I gather, and I want to know your answer to it. Under their reading, the millions of Americans who buy Toyotas could not resell them without getting the permission of the copyright holder of every item in that car which is copyrighted?
MR. OLSON: There may be -*
JUSTICE BREYER: Is that right?
MR. OLSON: There may be just -*
JUSTICE BREYER: Am I right or am I wrong? Am I off base or am I wrong -- am I right?
MR. OLSON: There are other defenses, but that is not this case. This case is not -*
[...]
JUSTICE BREYER: Now, explain to me, because they're horribles if I summarize them, millions and millions of dollars' worth of items with copyrighted indications of some kind in them that we import every year; libraries with three hundred million books bought from foreign publishers that they might sell, resale, or use; museums that buy Picassos that now, under our last case, receive American protection as soon as that Picasso comes to the United States, and they can't display it without getting permission from the five heirs who are disputing ownership of the Picasso copyrights.
Those are some of the horribles that they sketch. And if I am looking for the bear in the mouse hole, I look at those horribles, and there I see that bear.
So I'm asking you to spend some time telling me why I'm wrong.
MR. OLSON: Well, I'm -- first of all, I would say that when we talk about all the horribles that might apply in cases other than this -- museums, used Toyotas, books and luggage, and that sort of thing - *we're not talking about this case. And what we are talking about is the language used by the statute that does apply to this case. And that -*
JUSTICE KENNEDY: But you have to look at those hypotheticals in order to decide this case.
MR. OLSON: Well, and that's -*
JUSTICE KENNEDY: You're aware of the fact that if we write an opinion with the -- with the rule that you propose, that we should, as a matter of common sense, ask about the consequences of that rule. And that's what we are asking.
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The last part is key. This is so broad that it will impact the fundamental way(s) in which people will go about buying/selling/owning anything with a copyright on it.
If this is the case, you can't ever sell anything that has a copyright without the consent of the copyright owner. How absurd is that?
-alex |
