Item — HN Reader

So should we soon expect courts to reject copyright infringement or piracy claims?

So says the court in the article: "Electronically transferring data from a server in a foreign country to Google’s data center in California does not amount to a “seizure” because there is no meaningful interference with the account holder’s possessory interest in the user data."

My point is there could be analogies drawn. If taking copies of an email without the email owner's permission doesn't violate the owner's interest, then perhaps taking copies of media works without the owner's permission doesn't violate the owner's interest either? I'm suggesting strictly viewing, non-commercial use.

1 comments

Copyright infringements is not, even in principle, about seizure or possessory interest, so there is no relation between your question and the quote it is supposedly based o .

Neither is search and seizure about a possessory interest. It's about privacy and security. Even in the eighteenth century it was about "persons, papers, and effects." It was always an information security question.

A seizure is defined, basically, as something that harms a liberty (if a person is the subject) or possessory (if the subject is not a person) interest; without that there is no seizure, reasonable or unreasonable.

Likewise a search is something that harms a privacy interest.

Thank you. I'm saying the above somewhat tongue-in-cheek, because my gut feeling is that some aspect of interest has been violated in the case of the email owner or related parties. Of course, "gut feeling" is not a legal principle. So I'll go back to being Definitely Not A Lawyer.