As a child of the 1990s, everywhere I look I am confronted with reboots of the culture of my youth. Some of them are fun: my kids are wearing ridiculously baggy pants, flannel shirts, and Doc Martens just like I used to; the bands I like are reuniting for tours and documentaries. Some of these reboots are not so fun, though, like Big Content once again trying to kill the internet. We’ve seen the gruesome reanimation of SOPA embodied in siteblocking bills like FADPA and ACPA, bills that Re:Create has staunchly opposed alongside allies (EFF, PK, I2 Coalition, and more) from a diverse range of communities. And now, in the blockbuster Supreme Court case Cox v. Sony, the music industry has dragged us into the Supreme Court to explain once again that the internet is not just a vending machine for their products, just like we had to go to court to defend the VCR in the 1980s and to congress to defend the open internet in the 1990s.

The Cox case is about a deep and important question: when should a company be held legally responsible for how consumers use their products? Technologies like internet service are of course used by some people for unlawful ends. They also have many uses that are not just lawful, but essential to daily life. At this point it would probably be easier to name things you can’t do on the internet than to list all of the things in life that the internet enables or makes easier: applying for a job, finding healthcare, paying bills, renewing your driver’s license, planning a trip, filing your taxes, doing your homework, paying for parking, and on and on. Any technology powerful enough to do all that stuff could also be used for ill by someone determined to do it. But the law typically doesn’t hold an inventor or a service provider who sells general-purpose or multi-purpose tools liable for these inevitable, if regrettable, abuses, so long as they don’t actively encourage unlawful activities.

Big Content would like to change this rule, to hold ISPs and other technology providers liable for everything their users do. Of course, this would cripple the technology and compel ISPs and others to engage in mass surveillance and control of ordinary people’s everyday lives, but that’s not a bad outcome from the Big Content standpoint. Since the 1990s and before, Big Content has fantasized about an internet that would be little more than a portal to their products. No pesky competition from small and independent creative people. Certainly no opportunities for entirely new forms of creativity and entertainment that aren’t already under their control (see TL;DR below for an example). And they have shockingly little interest in all the things people do online that don’t involve entertainment. Hopefully the Justices will take a different view when the Supreme Court hears Cox v. Sony this term.