Supreme Court on File Sharing
Posted by Moonage on 27 Jun 2005 | Tagged as: National Politics
The unanimous decision sends the case back to lower court, which had ruled in favor of file-sharing services Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc. on the grounds that the companies couldn’t be sued. The justices said there was enough evidence of unlawful intent for the case to go to trial.
File-sharing services shouldn’t get a free pass on bad behavior, justices said.
I’m with the Supreme Court on this one. There are legitimate uses for file sharing. And, of course, there are illegitimate uses. The Groksters, Napsters, and Kazaas want a free rein to profit off the illegal file sharing by justifying it with being ignorant of pirating. They can still sell the legitimate uses, as Napster is. But, they have to be a lot more careful. That’s not a bad thing. Besides, anyone knows you can get the same thing accomplished using anonymous newsgroups. These companies, if all they are doing is profiting from the most basic function of the internet, have a bad business model. That’s not the fault of the Supreme Court. You can still to this day get pirated songs from Kazaa. For them to claim ignorance at this point is just unethical.
1 Comment »
on 27 Jun 2005 at 3:42 pm 1.Anything that defies my sense of reason.... said …
Morpheus/Grokster Senate Ruling Explained
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