[geoschmo]

Jack, that was a good post, however, it's not as cut and dried as all that. Gunmakers have in fact been sued, succesfully in some cases. Tobacco companies have been sued. And not just by smokers families, but by people who were affected by second-hand smoke. Automakers have been sued regarding vehicle accidents, which were ultimatly caused by someone breaking a law like speeding or running a red-light, but there may have been some flaw or poor design decision that contributed to the amount of damage from the accident. Drug companies get sued over doctors mis-prescribing their products. And at least some of the families of 9-11 victims considered, not sure if they actully went forward with it, suing the airlines and aiplane maufacturers over what the terrorists did. All of these are examples where a product with legal uses was used illegally or incorrectly by a third party and the manufacturer was held, or was attempted to be held partially liable.

The arguments that get made are whether the manufacturer made a sufficent effort to design the products with safeties to prevent their misuse.(guns, autos) Or if the end Users were given siffucent warning and instruction about how to use them safely and legally. (autos, tobacco) Or wehter the manufacturer participated in irrisponsible margeting practices in order to increase their sales with no thought given to the end result. (gun shows, unlicensed dun dealers, and kick back backs to doctors to increase prescription sales.)

It's kind of difficult to imagine a rope or kitchen knife being made perfectly safe from misuse and still have it be useable for it's primary purpose. However, if the kitchen manufacturer were marketing knives to kids to drive up sales they'd be dragged into court in a heartbeat. And if it was found that the microwave manufacturer hadn't made a reasonable effort to prevent the kind of tampering you described, they could probably expect to get a visit form a lawyer if such a thing were happening very often.

At this point the Mpaa isn't going after the bit-torrent programmer, but I could very easily see them attempting to do so in the future.