In this hypothetical situation, you would personally be giving me the drugs, albiet indirectly. It's not much different from if you set them down on the table next to me. How about this: if you want to get some drugs in Philadelphia, I'll give you directions to Kensington. You hop on the Market-Frankford line, get off at the Kensington stop, and take a walk up Frankford Avenue. There are lots of dealers hanging around there who would be happy to get you your fix.
Did I just commit a crime? I don't think so. Call the cops if you disagree, I'll stand in court for it.
Hm, it would be a closer analogy to Popcorn Time if you made a autonomous vehicle which drives to Frankford Avenue, buys the drugs with a robotic arm, and then carries them back to the car's owner.
I'll admit, I'm not actually sure where the law would fall in that situation, but I think the police would have a lot of questions for the car manufacturer, and I'd be on their side.
So if you came into my shoestore, and you asked me for some good walking shoes, and where to find drugs - then you used those shoes to get there - have I committed a crime?
How easy do I have to make it to commit crimes before I've made it too easy? The answer is it doesn't matter. There is no scenario in which I am legally at fault if you commit a crime with tools you got from me.
I feel like you're being deliberately obtuse here. The law has more nuance than this. Intent matters.
The key phrase is "significant non-infringing use". Shoes are obviously not built specifically to enable people to commit crimes. And most people who use shoes are not using them to commit crimes.
PopcornTime was built specifically to enable copyright infringement. The vast majority of people using PopcornTime do so to gain unauthorized access to copyrighted material.
This bit doesn't even have anything to do with the DMCA. (Regardless, I agree that this particular case is an abuse of the DMCA takedown process.)
I despise our current copyright regime, though perhaps not with the vehemence that you have. But no matter what I wish the state of things would be, this is the law, and this is how judges have interpreted it ever since Napster showed up in their courtrooms (at least).
> There is no scenario in which I am legally at fault if you commit a crime with tools you got from me.
If I serve you alcohol and then you drive drunk...
"The majority of states consider bars and restaurants to be liable for injuries or fatalities caused by an intoxicated individual who's over-imbibed in their establishment." [1]
Drinking and driving gets people killed. Pirating a movie makes a studio executive cry into tissues made out of hundred dollar bills stolen from their artists' pockets. The bartender gets a lawsuit, the pirate goes to jail for 20 years.
I don't disagree at all, I was just trying to find some parallels in law where someone who enables someone else to commit a crime by doing something otherwise innocuous under specific conditions is then held liable. This is the closest thing I could come up with.
