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Supreme Court Rulings
By Larry Hendrick | June 29, 2005
The last week or two has been a very busy time for the United States Supreme Court, especially in the technology arena. They have ruled for the cable companies and against Grokster and the speculation is rampant on the ramifications from these rulings.
Cable companies “do not” have to share their lines with competitors who could then compete with them in offering broadband Internet services. This was a case brought about by a California company wanting to do just that. On the surface this sounds like free enterprise receiving a “pat on the back.” There is more to this story, however. The cable companies have ventured far and wide from offering entertainment services to residential customers using their monopolies granted by the cities. Lately they have started offering broadband Internet service and more recently, telephone service. So now they hold monopolies and offer TV, Internet, and Telephone services.
This sounds a lot like the telephone companies of decades past and the government, along with the Supreme Court ruled that they must share their lines with competitors. In fact, a judicial ruling was the reason for ATT being dismantled to begin with, because they were a monopoly. Hmmm…they only sold telephones services and more recently Internet services which they are required to share.
This is not a simplistic situation by any means, but I do wonder about the reasoning behind this ruling.
Another ruling is technically a lot more complicated. They ruled that the music and movie industry could bring lawsuits against a couple of software companies that make software that can be used for illegal activities. Notice I said, can be used, not can only be used for illegal activities. There is a difference.
Because of all the technical implications of this ruling, I will not try to go into details, but will just say that I would be very surprised if the Justices had a any idea about what this case was about. This case is completely different than the Napster case of a few years ago. Napster was actually “holding” the illegal files on their server, where Grokster has no server. The closest I can equate this with is that under this ruling, Microsoft can be sued because a writer used Word to write a pornographic document. Most would conclude that Microsoft can not control what a writer does with it’s software once it leave the nest. The ruling said, “They are responsible.”
Whether you are for or against this is not the question. What concerns me is that by ruling on a subject so technical in nature (that even technical people are confused) does not bode well for future innovations. Not that a ruling of this type will stop innovation, as some have said, but that they could be ruled for or against by people that can’t spell the technical words, yet alone understand what it all means.
Topics: Business, Technology |