Announcement

**Chris** · November 7, 2005, 16:15

Originally posted by falconred

Obviously the above language is not theirs and was cooked up by the RIAA/MPAA lawyers. It will be interesting to see the comments over the next few days from the EFF and similar groups. Hollywood wins again.

Yeah...waah. Copyright owners win the right not to have their shit stolen, how lame of them. Give me a break. I know this is not anywhere near the most popular opinion, but Jesus...if you want a movie...buy it. If you want a CD...buy it. If you just want one song, there are plenty of places you can get single mp3's legally.

Do you work for free? I don't.

**bascule** · November 7, 2005, 17:49

The Grokster decision wasn't a bad one except for the fact that it still leaves some enormous ambiguity regarding technologies which can be used either for copyright infringement or perfectly legitimate purposes (e.g. BitTorrent). The decision basically said that Grokster was marketed as tool to violate copyright, and it's for that reason that it was ruled illegal.

**Zelazny's Cat** · November 7, 2005, 19:22

That message is bull. It was illegal to use Grokster, or any service/protocol/application to trade copyrighted material (assuming rights were reserved) in the first place, and a ruling that decided that wouldn't have ANY effect on Grokster.

What the court probably DID decide was that either:

1.Grokster went out of its way to promote piracy.
or
2. Grokster has a legal responsibility to prevent piracy on their network.

**Voltage Spike** · November 7, 2005, 19:30

Originally posted by Zelazny's Cat

That message is bull. It was illegal to use Grokster, or any service/protocol/application to trade copyrighted material (assuming rights were reserved) in the first place, and a ruling that decided that wouldn't have ANY effect on Grokster.

As you might assume, the law doesn't deal solely with what you did, but is very much concerned with your intent when you did it. Although I haven't read this ruling, I'm guessing that bascule is correct: the prosecution demonstrated that Grokster was created with the intent of violating copyright. Note that marketing a tool for a purpose is very good evidence of intent (someone told me that the original Grokster site advertised something along the lines of "millions of songs for free").

I seem to remember a frightening case of a university student that was prosecuted for the use of his file-sharing program rather than his intended use, but the details escape me...

**falconred** · November 7, 2005, 19:31

What I'm most bummed about is that it's going to take a new case (and probably years) to resolve the questions the Grokster case raised. They had plenty of legal issues left to argue, not the least the new "copyright infringement inducement" cause of action that the Supreme Court created. But instead Grokster decided to give up and go home. I can understand why, but tough tech-law issues will never be decided if big commercial companies can just bully defendants around until they settle without resolving any issues for the rest of us.

**Zelazny's Cat** · November 7, 2005, 19:48

Voltage: You're saying the same thing I did...Read the rest of my original post.

If the case was based solely on their inducing copyright infringement, then it didn't really decide anything new.

The vast majority of peer to peer networks, even if they do condone infringement, have the sense not to let on. Most include a "using this service in order to [commit a crime] is prohibited" disclaimer, so they'd be less vulnerable to that line of attack.

If anything new IS brought up, I'm pretty sure it'll be whether or not the networks have to monitor their users and actively try to prevent illegal activity from occuring.

**bascule** · November 7, 2005, 19:53

Originally posted by Zelazny's Cat

Grokster has a legal responsibility to prevent piracy on their network.

They can't do that, and that was why the case was so important, and why it's so disappointing that the Supreme Court weaseled their way out of ruling on the specifics of the technology. The FastTrack network precludes any kind of content regulation because it's completely decentralized, with the machines of random users providing SuperNodes which others connect to.

**xwred1** · November 8, 2005, 01:49

I think they should shutdown hard disk manufacturers for promoting piracy. They sell these 500gb drives, its obvious 90% of the people using them fill them with illegal material.

It'd be a good idea to build copyright-enforcement mechanisms into hard drives.

**Floydr47** · November 8, 2005, 08:39

Originally posted by xwred1

I think they should shutdown hard disk manufacturers for promoting piracy. They sell these 500gb drives, its obvious 90% of the people using them fill them with illegal material.

Yes, I agree, if 90% of the people are using them for illegal activities then the other 10% of law abiding citizens should be punished along with them...brilliant idea.

Originally posted by 'Zelazny's Cat"

It'd be a good idea to build copyright-enforcement mechanisms into hard drives.

So we give major industry the right to decide what we can and cannot have on our hard drives? Why not allow them to decide what we are allowed to listen to or what we are allowed to think for that matter? Perhaps we should just allow all files in our computers to be examined at anytime by anyone who wishes to, that way everyone would know we don't have any copyrighted files. Personally, I would like access to all the governments files, just to make sure that they don't have any of MY copyrighted files.

**jur1st** · November 8, 2005, 10:16

The decision basically said that Grokster was marketed as tool to violate copyright, and it's for that reason that it was ruled illegal.

This was the sole reason that Grokster won. I highly reccomend that people download and read the first portion of Justice Souter's opinion. It is extremely well written. The day the decision came down, I was scared of how broad the opinion would be, but after reading it I felt comfortable with it. The nail in the coffin, an internal email stating the following:

“"We have put this network in place so that when Napster pulls the plug on their free service . . . or if the Court orders them shut down prior to that . . . we
will be positioned to capture the flood of their 32 million users that will be actively looking for an alternative.’ ”"

I think they should shutdown hard disk manufacturers for promoting piracy.

While your sarcasm is palpable, it brings up an excellent point. Storage is not the industry which has been indirectly profiting from piracy, it is the ISPs. While the terms in their commercials have been toned down recently, most ads for broadband for the last few years have shouted "download music and movies at lightning fast speeds." now seriously, they know that iFilm and iTunes downloads aren't what those fast connections have been used for in the past 5 years.

**astcell** · November 8, 2005, 12:12

If there was a way that I could download from your PC a song that I wanted, then the program could verify the integrity of the file, debit your bank account 99 cents then let you save the file to disk. Think about that. All the record stores may be hurting because the MEDIUM will be negated, but the license fees will still be paid which is all they want anyway. Then the company can save your logon as an authorized user in case you need to doqnload the song again due to a disk crash or the like.

I do not like other subscription services, some of them do not let you access the songs after you cancel your subscription. And at last Super Bowl, Napster was hawking their cheap prices yet they do not work with iPod.

It's time for both ends to come together. Simply have a way to "unlock" the songs for good for the user once paid. Yes there wil be abuse, but this is akin to shoplifting in the record store. Hopefully this "shrinkage" will be negligible and only for kicks and the community will happily stay legal in order to have this techology stick around.

**TheCotMan** · November 8, 2005, 12:30

Futurama had a related quote on this:

(About "kidnappster" in a Futurama episode when CEO is asked to stop sharing celebs for copy to robot bodies.)
Nerd: "You can't shut us down! The internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people's ideas. We've done nothing wrong!"
http://www.gotfuturama.com/Multimedi...Sounds/3ACV15/

**Siviak** · November 8, 2005, 13:15

Originally posted by TheCotMan

Futurama had a related quote on this...

as a matter of fact that eppisode was on just last night :) GOD bless Adult Swim

**astcell** · November 8, 2005, 13:47

Originally posted by Siviak

as a matter of fact that eppisode was on just last night :) GOD bless Adult Swim

And I suppose you recorded it to post here? :>

Announcement

Grokster shuts down

Grokster shuts down

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