Four more large Internet service providers told the US Supreme Court this week that ISPs shouldn’t be forced to aggressively police copyright infringement on broadband networks.
While the ISPs worry about financial liability from lawsuits filed by major record labels and other copyright holders, they also argue that mass terminations of Internet users accused of piracy “would harm innocent people by depriving households, schools, hospitals, and businesses of Internet access.” The legal question presented by the case “is exceptionally important to the future of the Internet,” they wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday.
The issue isn’t quite so much copyright as privatization. And the distinction between “freedom on the high seas” and “AI” gets into the idea of the long term ownership of media.
One of the problems I run into, as a consumer of media, is that I can purchase a piece of content and then discover the service or medium I purchased it on has gone defunct. Maybe its an old video game with a console that’s broken or no longer able to hook up to my TV. Maybe its a movie I bought on a streaming service that no longer exists. Maybe its personal content I’ve created that I’d like to transfer between devices or extend to other people. Maybe its a piece of media I don’t trust sending through the mail, so I’d prefer to transfer it digitally. Maybe its a piece of media I can’t buy, because no one is selling it anymore.
Under the Torrent model, I can give or get a copy of a piece of media I already own in a format that my current set of devices support. Like with a library.
Under the AI model, somebody else gets to try and extort licensing fees from me for a thing they never legally possessed to begin with.
I see a huge distinction between these two methods of data ownership and distribution.