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Programming

  • 21-11-2007 10:15pm
    #1
    donutface
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 461 ✭✭


    Hypothetically if someone hired me to develop him a P2P program such as BitTorrent (plus a website to go along with it that might very well host copyrighted material) and pay me maintanence fee's in order to keep the program up to date, could I be held liable if the person hiring me was to be sued?

    My guess is its pretty similar to if someone asks me to make them a gun and they go off to kill someone with it, technically I cannot be held responsible, but If I knew his intentions all along it might be different?


Comments

  • #2
    Rhonda9000
    Closed Accounts Posts: 451 ✭✭Rhonda9000


    Creating software - not a problem. "Maintenance fees" and keeping something that assists in stomping over copyrights etc. up and running may well militate against the person that is running the show.. be they the original programmer or not.


  • #3
    donutface
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 461 ✭✭donutface


    thank you very much :)


  • #4
    Tom Young
    Legal Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 4,338 Mod ✭✭✭✭Tom Young


    http://jiplp.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/jpm077v1?ijkey=PUyOS40LmBKlBXU&keytype=ref

    GO read! ;)


  • #5
    Rhonda9000
    Closed Accounts Posts: 451 ✭✭Rhonda9000


    Interesting Tom (the bit that I read!). Does this mean liability (for 3rd party 'misuse' of the software product) attaches to the author because the copyright for the software is vested inalienably in them?


  • #6
    Pines
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 225 ✭✭Pines


    Rhonda9000 wrote: »
    Interesting Tom (the bit that I read!). Does this mean liability (for 3rd party 'misuse' of the software product) attaches to the author because the copyright for the software is vested inalienably in them?

    No. The article is only concerned with the ownership of copyright, not with liability that may arise from use of software, so I don't think it's all that relevant to the OP's question, except insofar as it suggests that the person commissioning the software should be entitled to the copyright, depending on various circumstances.

    The point that Rhonda9000 made first about maintaining something that "stomps all over copyright" is much more relevant. If your program contains any features which strip away or defeat rights protection measures, then that is going to be a problem.

    Making, selling, renting or having in your possession a "protection-defeating device", or providing a service or information to assist in circumventing rights protection measures, makes you effectively liable for infringement of copyright resulting from the disablement of rights protection measures by your software. (This is based on Irish law; different rules apply elsewhere.)

    File sharing software isn't illegal per se as long as it's not designed to defeat copy protection. The use of such software to distribute copyright works is unlikely in my view to land the software's author in trouble. If you get invovled in maintaining a database full of copyright works as part of your maintenance contract on the website, you may be seen as part of the problem, however.


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