apple news/media reports
06/27/2005, 11:30am, EDT
Monday, June 27th
Supreme Court rules against P2P, Apple to benefit?
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of studios and record labels, saying that peer-to-peer software companies should be liable for the copyright infringement of people using their products, according to CNET News.com: "We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement," wrote Justice David Souter in the majority opinion. Earlier today, analyst firm Piper Jaffray said that Apple's iTunes "would be the primary beneficiary" of such a decision.
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The lower courts reasoned that, like VCRs, the file-sharing software can be used for "substantial" legal purposes, such as giving away free songs, free software or government documents. They also said the file-sharing services were not legally responsible because they don't have central servers pointing users to copyright material.
But in Monday's ruling, Souter said lower courts could find the file-sharing services responsible by examining factors such as how companies marketed the product or whether they took easily available steps to reduce infringing uses.
I'll give up my rights to P2P if the Supreme Court is willing to make the same stance for handguns and other firearms. Sounds like a fair trade to me.
I'll leave it to the legal eagles to hash out how this affects the Betamax decision. IMHO, things probably wont change much in the short term. This will have to be litigated further.
that means the bush appointee's can and will arbitrarily rule against any companies, citing this precedent.
if you are a legitimate company, but are looking at a 50% chance...oh nevermind, just a 10% chance that you will be litigated into bankruptcy...you cannot take that risk.
it's the end of innovation in many important areas of p2p.
Wow, that was easy ...
"lower courts could find the file-sharing services responsible by examining factors such as how companies marketed the product or whether they took easily available steps to reduce infringing uses."
If a gun maker markets the item as "kill everyone with it. kill loved one, hated ones, all ones" and made it really easy to kill people with it (gave you a laser target, easy flow trigger, etc, for the sole reason of killing someone) that is where the gun maker is liable.
A P2P program maker who activly markets their app as a program to download music without paying for the music, then the program maker is liable. Plus if they make it easier to download those songs (like the multi-source features so groups of like files are clumped together so you are dead sure to get that song), they could also be held liable.
And since when do PTP software companies actually advertise/promote their ability to do illegal things? Did Grokster actually do this? Or was this implied.
'nuff said.
That was Napster's business model. I thought they should have been slapped down fast and hard before they brought the whole category of software into ill repute... but instead they hung on so long they were able to create a brand worth buying and re-purposing as a legit download service.
I think using the "-ster" suffix may have been a mistake. :)