Say Goodbye to Radar Detectors?

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Say Goodbye to Radar Detectors?

3/23/2005

By Terry Calhoun

CAMPUS I/T NEEDS TO PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE COURT BATTLES ENTERTAINMENT COMPANIES ARE WAGING TO CURB DIGITAL COPYING

In my youth, I was a fast driver. I would zip around the Midwest at 85-95 mph in a variety of cars, including my two favorites: a 1965 red, 4-door Corvair and a yellow (with black vinyl top) 1967 Camaro. Now that the latest neurological research shows that my adult decision-making faculties were not yet developed (That apparently happens at about age 25 and I can truly flash back to a number of instances which should have killed me.) I have my excuse and I can admit the error of my ways.

I was appalled, however, when the first radar detectors came out because I could never understand how a tool that was clearly designed only to evade law enforcement could be legal. Even during the time when, one summer, I evaded an Ohio State Highway Patrol aircraft's surveillance by driving up under a pavilion and hiding out for half an hour, I refused to have anything to do with radar detectors. I do like to make digital copies of things, though . . .

Later, when I attended Michigan Law School, I learned a little more about the law permitting that kind of technology but I never really accepted it. Now, the movie and music industries, along with other entertainment industries like big-time sports, are pouring money into Capitol Hill in a concerted effort to pass legislation that might have-as an unintended consequence - the 'illegalization' of radar detectors.

You see, a line of Supreme Court decisions that are mostly represented by the case of Sony v. Universal Studios (1984), a.k.a. 'The Betamax Case', hold that so long as 'substantial commercial non-infringing uses' from a technology are possible then manufacturers are absolved of liability for the use to which consumers put their products.

In other words, Xerox is not responsible if you make fake dollar bills with their copiers and Sony is not liable if you use their tapes and VCRs to make illegal copies of movies. (In a similar analogy bit with a different line of cases, radar detector manufacturers are okay because there is at least a claimed 'safety' element to drivers using them. (It's a stretch to me, but boy the law can be strange.)

What's happened recently, of course, is that the sharing of digital information-which now can include anything that is even remotely considered entertainment-is so much easier due to the broadband connections we have over the Internet and due to the many different easy and cheap ways in which digital information can be copied and transmitted.

Sure, we all know people who made copies of VHS tapes for friends or to sell in the 1980s, but it took a substantial time and money investment to do so. Now, nearly anyone who is not homeless (and even the homeless at the local library) can duplicate thousands of copies of a lot of things and send them all over the place.

So, peer-to-peer networks and digital copying are the target of the combined might of all the entertainment industries and, even though their attack was recently blunted by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in MGM v. Grokster, that case has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and later this month we'll all be listening to summaries of both sides of the case on our local NPR stations.