Recently I met a promising young computer scientist, whose name I will withhold for reasons that will soon be evident. He has developed a very interesting network software system that would be useful for a great many legitimate applications. I was impressed by his system and wondered why I hadn’t heard of it before.
The reason, it turns out, is that he isn’t sure he wants the public to find out about his research. He says this, even though his work would probably be of interest to many people, and could be useful to far more. The problem, he told me, is that if too many people find out what he has done and realize its value, some of them may start using it for illegal purposes. He doesn’t want that kind of trouble, so he is avoiding bringing his work to the attention of the broader public, publishing it in research venues where a small community of experts will see it, but avoiding any further disclosure.
It’s hard to blame him, given the unsettled state of secondary liability law. If some people start using his system illegally, will he be liable? Will he have to redesign his system to try (probably fruitlessly) to make illegal uses impossible? How many redesigns will be necessary? Will he have to face the same uncertainty that Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent, faces? He doesn’t want any of that
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