You could say that anything is uncertain until specifically litigated. But I don’t think that’s true, and I don’t think people should behave as if it is true; that just lets copyright expand ever further.

I do agree that copyright in general creates bad uncertainty, but this isn’t one of those instances. The complexity of the provisions here is problematic, and it also raises costs to have to figure out if you’re in the right box, but 512(b) doesn’t require much in the way of judgment calls.

I will update the main post above shortly to mention the DMCA provisions on caching, which I’m aware of, but my point was not that this is definitely copyright infringement–just that there is legal uncertainty, and it “could” be; and if it is, this just shows another problem with copyright, that it would prevent this kind of great technology (and even if it doesn’t prevent it, until we know for sure, there is legal uncertainty).

I guess litigation will tell us. Thank goodness for the regime of legal certainty statutory law affords us!

This is of course one of the most serious problems with IP – it is such a vague concept that nobody actually knows when an actionable violation has taken place. There are clear violations such as a company mass-copying DVDs and selling them or giving them away, and there are undisputed non-violations such as having your browser keep a copy of web content in its cache. But what about everything else? Such as manually saving a copy of web content in order to read it later, creating a backup copy of a DVD, or making a PVR recording and then letting your friends watch it. Nobody can come up with a simple, clear definition of what is a violation and what is not. This is not very surprising, because the concept of IP is itself vague and undefined.

The only thing about IP that is actually easy and simple to understand is that it is a shakedown of the public by large corporations working in connivance with government.