Earth: Mostly Harmless

MGM vs. Grokster: P2P on Trial

April 2, 2005 on 1:25 am |
Categories: copyright, general, law, law, copyright and drm, technology
Tags: copyright, eff, electronic-frontier-foundation, general, grokster, law, MGM-vs.-Grokster, mpaa, supreme-court, technology, united-states-supreme-court

At a time when the future development of the Internet is on trial in the US Supreme Court in the MGM vs. Grokster and Streamcast Networks case, it is fascinating to hear the original arguments made in 1983 establishing the Betamax princple - that as long as a technology has ’substantial non-infringing uses’ then the manufacturer cannot be held liable for copyright infringements which may be committed by their users.

Spoken Word Principle Investigator Jerry Goldman’s excellent OYEZ Supreme Court audio archive site has an excellent quality MP3 of the original arguments made. I’m listening to it now, and it’s remarkable how close the 1983 case parallels the current one.

A straw poll of Google News sources suggests that Supreme Court justices were divided in their response to oral evidence from both sides, but that the substance of peer to peer technology should be safe. Let’s hope so.

There’s more info on the EFF site (the EFF are defending Grokster/StreamCast).