While I approve of how the ruling turned out, I wouldn’t categorize this as uplifting news for two reasons:
- it potentially sets up for AI companies to get away with their piracy
- it’s part of a general wave of Supreme Court rulings absolving corporations for the damage they enable through their products
Don’t get too excited; I’m sure the next move will be to make it easier for those companies to sue the pants off of users en masse. Last thing they can allow is corporate accountability.
Appreciate the wins when you can. Treating ISPs as a utility is a win.
In this case, “corporate accountability” (for not banning people from the internet because they torrented some media without a VPN) is a bad thing and it’s good they aren’t imposing it.
the next move will be to make it easier for those companies to sue the pants off of users en masse
Probably not imo, they already tried that somewhat and the main effect was to inspire massive popular anti-copyright sentiment, so they changed gears. At this point the issue here is increasingly irrelevant, since the way they are collecting those user IP addresses relies on people using torrents but more piracy is happening via streaming now than torrents. The next move will more likely focus on cracking down on and/or blocking streaming sites.
I’m just being cynical. The overall push is to eliminate anonymity on the internet, which I think will also lead to a massive piracy crackdown eventually. With creeping authoritarianism, it will be used as a weapon.
