Intel speaks out about P2P

EFF: Deep Links: “The clear rule of law this Court announ­ced in Sony has ser­ved the nation well for more than 20 years. Intel, which pro­vi­des the digi­tal buil­ding blocks at the heart of the infor­ma­tion eco­nomy, and other tech­no­logy inno­va­tors have relied on the Sony rule in deve­lo­ping and deplo­ying digi­tal tech­no­lo­gies that, though desig­ned for nonin­frin­ging uses, could be put to infrin­ging uses. The various tests pro­po­sed by Peti­tio­ners would require an inven­tor to pre­dict, at the time it crea­tes a new pro­duct, not only how peo­ple will use a pro­duct that has yet to be desig­ned, let alone intro­du­ced in the mar­ket­place, but also which of the various poten­tial uses will ulti­ma­tely pre­do­mi­nate over the other poten­tial uses. Such pre­di­ca­tions are impos­si­ble in the real world, espe­cially since the uses to which pro­ducts are put rou­ti­nely change over time.

Digi­tal tech­no­lo­gies are by their nature cop­ying tech­no­lo­gies; there will always be a risk that any digi­tal tech­no­logy, howe­ver well inten­tio­ned its desig­ner, will be put to infrin­ging uses. Faced with impos­si­ble pre­dic­tions about how as yet unde­ve­lo­ped tech­no­lo­gies might be used, ambi­guous tests that would be unpre­dic­ta­ble in their appli­ca­tion, and nearly limit­less sta­tu­tory dama­ges for gues­sing wrong about the unk­no­wa­ble, inno­va­tors, such as Intel, would grow timid. It would be irra­tio­nal to bring new pro­ducts to mar­ket in the face of mas­sive uncer­tainty; inno­va­tors, such as Intel, would have no choice but to withhold from the mar­ket socially and eco­no­mi­cally use­ful pro­ducts. The natio­nal eco­nomy, which has grown through tech­no­lo­gi­cal inno­va­tion over the 20 years since this Court deci­ded Sony, would suffer. …

The enter­tain­ment indus­tries have repea­tedly pre­dic­ted that new tech­no­lo­gies would des­troy their busi­nes­ses. Although their con­cerns are unders­tan­da­ble, new tech­no­lo­gies that are capa­ble of subs­tan­tial nonin­frin­ging use have, over time, bene­fi­ted both the enter­tain­ment indus­tries and the public. or exam­ple, pro­fes­sio­nal base­ball ini­tially barred radio broad­casts of games out of fear that radio would reduce atten­dance; the film stu­dios fea­red that VCRs would be the end of movie thea­ters (and before that, refu­sed to license thea­tri­cal movies for tele­vi­sion dis­tri­bu­tion); the music industry fea­red that free, over-the-air radio would put record dis­tri­bu­tion out of busi­ness; and the film stu­dios ini­tially resis­ted the intro­duc­tion of DVD tech­no­logy. Ulti­ma­tely all of these inno­va­tions pro­ved enor­mously pro­fi­ta­ble to enter­tain­ment companies.”