Why Copyright Negligence Won’t Fly  As some of you may recall,
Mr. Randazza and I recently wrote competing viewpoints on the
extent of third-party liability for copyright infringement.  As
some of the comments noted, the two articles talked past each
other a bit.  My article focused on existing theories of
copyright liability under the Copyright Act, while Mr.
Randazza’s focused on a purportedly different, negligence-based
theory of liability.  According to Mr. Randazza, Plaintiff’s may
sue the owner of an unsecured Wi-Fi connection based on a common
law theory of negligence that is entirely distinct from existing
theories of copyright liability.  Now that I’ve had an
opportunity to read Mr. Randazza’s article, I’d like the
opportunity to respond.  Several commentators, including the
Intellectual Property Director at the EFF,  Corynne McSherry,
have begun to highlight very serious problems with the Mr.
Randazza’s proposed theory, including statutory immunity via the
CDA and/or DMCA and the fact that “copyrigh