Free Internet porn isn't unfair competition to pay sites

[solipsist]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/appeals-court-free-porn-isnt-unfair-competition-to-pay-sites.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss

[iwwr]

If the decision turned out differently, Microsoft would have grounds to sue every F/OSS dev with a product similar to something MS is selling.

[larrik → iwwr]

True, but open source developers aren't known for the piles of money they're sitting on.

Besides, F/OSS has never been a huge threat to Microsoft. They're the ones that set the price of things like web browsers to $0, and they came mostly late to the party for serious server deployments (vs. IBM, SUN, Linux, etc.)

[Pinckney → iwwr]

The plaintiff's assertion is not just that they are unable to compete with a free product, but that they are unable to compete with a product which, according to them, is only being given away for the purpose of harming competitors and establishing a monopoly.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing>;

No OSS developer can establish a monopoly, because the terms of the license permit redistribution. Thus while they may drive other vendors out of the market, they can not hope to charge monopoly prices, as anyone else could promptly undercut them at no cost with their own software.

[larrik]

If they won this lawsuit, would that let Classmates.com shut down Facebook?

I love how the judges decided it was a SLAPP lawsuit, which means not only is the lawsuit baseless, but it's obviously completely ridiculous.

[Monkeyget]

If tube sites steal content why don't they simply get sued for copyright infringment?

[iwwr → Monkeyget]

They don't steal content, they give it away, thus undercutting for-pay sites. They were trying to pull the 'unfair competition' angle.