Impulse

Yesterday, the house passed S.397 which makes gun man­u­fac­tur­ers not liable for any crimes or dam­age done by peo­ple using their prod­ucts (NY Times, AP).
Meanwhile, this sum­mer, Grokster v. MGM man­dated that soft­ware com­pa­nies can be held liable for crimes com­mit­ted by peo­ple using their prod­ucts.
If a society’s val­ues can be mea­sured by the laws they pass, then our soci­ety val­ues stop­ping piracy more than it does stop­ping assault, armed rob­bery, and mur­der.
Or, per­haps, a dif­fer­ent expla­na­tion: Government for the money, by the money.

Related posts:

1. Thumbing the scales of democracy