PocketMatrix

The United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling, disagreed with two lower court rulings. Today’s opinion agrees with the MPAA and RIAA contention that P2P developers are responsible for the infringing activities of its users.

Apparently, the only reason Grokster and StreamCast lost is that they were distributing 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.

The technology itself isn't a problem, but the supreme court ruled that the companies were fostering copyright infringement.



I think this is gonna open the door for companies to sue P2P companies all over the place even though, as one judge put it, a copy machine or vcr can be used illegally, but you wouldn't sue the manufacturer. I'm not advocating piracy, but the technology is a good one. I find myself watching weird little webisodes all over the place using P2P as their main distributor. I'm hoping this doesn't cripple progress.

Comments?

Fortunately, due to the nature of P2P, no number of lawsuits can stop the technology.

Think back to the good old days of Napster - the record companys won their cases against Napster, and see what that's gotten us: thanks to that, we've had dozens of P2P programs and new tech. Now we don't just share music like in the Napster days, but software, video, images, etc.

All thanks to the lawsuits and the awesome P2P crowd.

Even *if* a lawsuit would stop us, I'm sure there's new tech just around the corner to get around all that. We're years ahead of any new legislation.

You download from someone who is willing to upload. It's like if I bought a CD and copy it for a friend. Still illegal in some ways, but it's different from stealing on the shelves. So don't call it pirating please.

Here's an example. Shrek II. How could that lose money??? well it did. They had so many DVDs returned unsold by shops that the company has just gone into the red and only Christmas DVD sales of Madagascar are likely to save them.

Don't you want really good films to be made ????