Several dozen entertainment industry companies including Hollywood and record companies joined in asking the US Supreme Court reverse a lower appeals court decision ruling that the developers behind file sharing software are not liable copyright infringement. The lower court ruled that the companies behind the file sharing software are not liable for how the consumers use their networks since these do not vary significantly from VCRs, photocopiers and so on which can also be used for both legitimate purposes and abused.
Unlike the early Betamax case, the entertainment industry claims that this recent ruling conflicts with earlier court rulings that Aimster and original Napster were both liable for how consumers used their networks resulting in an order to shut down these networks. However, according to Gigi Sohn president of Public Knowledge, there is no reason for the Supreme Court to review the recent decision ruling file-sharing networks since despite the initial threat with the VCR, it turned out to be both profitable and successful for both the consumers and the movie industry.
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The decisions have been among the biggest setbacks for the entertainment industry in the past several years, as they have tried to quell the rampant exchange of copyrighted materials over peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus. In a joint petition to the Supreme Court, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said that letting the lower court rulings stand would badly undermine the value of copyrighted work. "This is one of the most important copyright cases ever to reach this court," the groups said in papers filed with the court. "Resolution of the question presented here will largely determine the value, indeed the very significance, of copyright in the digital era." The ongoing case has helped define the limits of what is legal for software companies, as the entertainment companies have tried to hold peer-to-peer developers responsible for the widespread copyright infringement of people using their products. Read the full article here and more at Reuters here. |
It would be nice if the US Supreme Court ends up apposing the entertainment industry demands. Both the MPAA and RIAA have successfully got on very well with the threat of Radio, cassette recorders, VCRs, CD recorders and DVD recorders and it is not like their sales have ground to a halt just because P2P has sprung up a few years ago. Peer to peer networks are just like another form of the Internet, but dealing strictly with files rather than web pages. Unlike the treat P2P appears to have, we do not see newspaper companies trying to fight off the Internet (or news websites) because people can now read the latest news online instead of buying a paper.
Source: C|net News - Music
