Quakester2000 used our news submit to tell us that Grokster and Morpheus are fighting for their legal lives. In question is who is responsible for the abuses that are bound to occur in an open P2P network. Is it the responsibility of the developers to police such activity? It wasn't in 1984.
 Less than a year ago, the two services prevailed in a lawsuit brought against them by the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Ass. of America (MPAA). The two trade bodies alleged that Grokster and Morpheus were indeed complicit in any copyright infringement carried out on the ad-hoc networks supported by their applications. However, the Court ruled that, like cassette deck manufacturers, the software developers could not be held responsible for illegal file transfers since their code could also be used for perfectly legal file-shares. US District Court Judge Stephen Wilson dismissed the RIAA and MPAA's case. Last August, the MPAA and RIAA appealed against that ruling, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal opened its hearing yesterday. In court, the content industry's advocates argued before the Tribunal that Grokster and Morpheus should be forced to incorporate technology that blocks the sharing of copyright material - essentially to turn them into copyright police. That's not our job, the P2P purveyors' lawyers responded, Reuters reports. Grokster"s attorney, Michael Page, noted that if the two companies are held liable for illegal file-shares, so too would ISPs, CD and DVD burner manufacturers and other software suppliers, too. Which is, of course, exactly the outcome the content industry wants. |
Sony won in a similar case in 1984. The court ruled that the VCR maker was not responsible whenever one of its machines was used to copy a videocassette without the permission of the copyright holder. What's changed? Appellate Judge John Noonan asked. Russell Frackman, attorney for the MPAA, argued that Grokster and Morpheus could block copyright infringement with filtering software, something Sony could not have done in the early 1980s.
Source: The Register
