The Ruling of Supreme Court in the P2P Technology Case
June 29th, 2005 Leave a comment Visited 38 times, 1 so far today
The Ruling of Supreme Court in the P2P Technology Case
The Supreme Court of the United States has just ruled in a case between MGM and P2P Company Grokster that the P2P application developers are responsible for the actions of the users of their technology. This means that the software and technology developing companies can now be sued if their applications are used for sharing digitally protected content on the Internet.
Organizations like MPAA and RIAA are quite happy to achieve this historic victory in the highest courts in the country. They claim that it was about time that something was done to punish the companies that encourage illegal sharing of copyrighted works be held accountable.
However, courts have stressed on the fact that this is not about the technology that enables file sharing but the attitude, which promotes the act of trading illegal files. The Justices said that both Grokster and StreamCast promoted their services as replacement of the busted Napster File Sharing Network. Justice David Souter said in the court’s opinion: “Grokster and StreamCast’s efforts to supply services to former Napster users, deprived of a mechanism to copy and distribute what were overwhelmingly infringing files, indicate a principal, if not exclusive, intent on the part of each company to bring about infringement.â€
This went big time against the P2P companies in this particular case.
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June 29th, 2005 at 06:01 am
This supreme court ruling opens the door for many lawsuits in related topics: mainly the gun and ammo makers can theoretically be sued for promoting the capabilities of their products, hehehe, I love this country!
Try winmx, it works and does not promote any illegal file sharing, and users are not monitored either. more importantly, it is not a US based operation, and therefore not bound by the latest court rulings. What people do with the software is up to themselves.
June 29th, 2005 at 06:21 am
I am not a lawyer but evidently most journalists either don’t read the court cases or they stop reading before they get to the concurring/dissenting opinions. Also, if I remember right, the Supreme Court decides matters of law, not fact. So the high court simply said that the lower court unreasonably barred claims based on the ways in which Grokster and Streamcast allegedly encouraged their users to infringe on the copyrights of the plaintiff.
The court in this case appears to have held that Sony does not bar the court from addressing issues of contribution to copyright infringement that go beyond mere distribution of a product. Note that Breyer in his concurring opinion cites the court-sponsored survey which indicated that only 9% of uses of the betamax recorders (in the cited Sony case) were used for clearly noninfringing uses.
This case, I assume, is going to go back to the lower court where a trial will likely be necessary to determine whether and to what extent Grokster and Streamcast actively encouraged the copyright
June 29th, 2005 at 08:00 am
Sue microsoft and every major compony – they provide a software we can use the operating system to run server and “safe ground” to perform “P2P” act. Are we going to be in hell?
June 29th, 2005 at 08:24 am
Technically, just US decisions like this won’t make any big difference, since internet access is worldwide. Personally this is stupid if you ask me, like winmx user said first, are we going to be able to sue a silicon company for promoting breast implants???
October 13th, 2005 at 04:58 am
If I went to Washington, DC and shot George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and the entire Supreme Court, would someone sue Remington for making a product that makes this possible. I wish I had the gall enough to find out…
October 28th, 2005 at 04:33 am
okay, With P2P what theyre doing is they are trying to make all ISPs give up the log files that they’ve got of everyone using P2P networks to dowload stuff. So the network itself might not be tracking you but the Servers and ISPs are.
November 2nd, 2005 at 08:22 am
I agree with the first Win MX user also. But if you see now Win MX does not work. They are “Temporarily” shut down. I’d sure like to know how long temporary is. If you feel the need to download you can always go to Kazaa,Limewire, or Bearshare. From what I know these networks still are in working condition. You cannot sue a company that supports there A.) Their own product or B.) The reason there made (In this case a P2P is made for the sharing of files). Some one had to buy the music in the first place.
If any of you watch South Park they criticize everything. In one episode Cartman bets Kyle he can have a platinum selling album before Kyle. Anyway as you get more into this episode Kyle and his band Moop “illegaly download”. A officer shows the boys what downloaders like themselves have done. Master P couldn’t buy that island his son always wanted. Another instince is Britney Spears, she used to have a personel jet and she had to downgrade. Her downgraded jet didnt have a remote for the 7.1 surround system. Boo Hoo they make tons of money just from merchandise or royalties. This is how I stand on this matter.