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RIAA, MPAA Lose Suit Against Streamcast and Grokster
ha-reed writes "News.com is reporting that a federal court judge in Los Angeles has handed down a ruling that Streamcast Networks (the company that makes Morpheus) and Grokster are not liable for copyright infringements due to files that are traded with their software. The judge made the comparison between file sharing software and VCR's that many supporters of file sharing often use." EFF has the decision (1.4Mb PDF) online (and a .torrent is
here
in case eff.org melts, which it won't). See our most recent story about the lawsuit.
Judge Wilson, who decided this case, is known as a libertarian. He's no corporate stooge, as some have suggested, just becasue he ruled that Kazaa can be sued in the US.
Now that we finally got some results on the merits, we can see that we may actually be in good hands here.
Other than the low quality... a PDF of a scanned fax apparently, it is a good read, not nearly as hard a read as some other court documents I have had a look at. One of the most important quotes from the ruling in my opinion is "Here, it is undisputed that there are substantial noninfringing uses for Defendants' software..." pg.11 ln.16 to me this is basically affirming the right of p2p networks and technologies in general to exist. Hopefully this works its way around and is used against the MPAA's and RIAA's efforts to lobby for technology controls.
Have you thought for yourself today?
The Supreme Court: Sony vs. Univeral - "The sale of the VTR's to the general public does not constitute contributory infringement of respondents' copyrights."
Other cases that were handled by Judge Willson hint to the fact that he is one of the few liberal and pro-Internet (as in "in favor of freedom of individual Internet users") in the country.
No idea if those details made it into the courtroom or not
Rest assured, they did. I've read the amicus briefs on this case, and the many declarations. As they're public documents, I can make them available if anyone's interested.
geek. lawyer.
"First, both tools can be used in the same way, but file sharing apps provide for widespread distribution of content. Generally speaking, VCRs don't have such a far reaching capability."
I don't think the point had to do with distribution, it had to do with the legality of using a VCR. There's plenty of legal things you can do with a VCR even though it can be used to violate copyrights.
As for the VCR being a tool for distribution, it kind of matters how you look at it. Somebody could tape Star Wars off the TV and resell that movie to make money. They'd be encouraged to do so as long as they're making money. With the internet and P2P, there's no real satisfaction towards sharing because you get no money out of it. It's just part of the network. It kinda balances out when you think of it that way. The distribution of it's not as bad as the making money from it. Then there's the whole matter of whether or not the other side is downloading it legally or not. (I.e. what if I'm downloading an Mp3 from a CD I have?)
" VCRs on the other hand, often used for simply watching something at a different time..."
That's part of it, but there's also the archival part of it. That's what got Jack Valenti all upset. He was worried about people making libraries of tapes and then selling them to each other. Time shifting is no longer time shifting when you mean for the tape to permenantly store that content. Then you really have made a copy, and since you didn't pay for it you're in trouble.
Stupid, iddnt it? Good thing the courts ruled in consumer's favor over it.
"Derp de derp."
Its not deniability, but control. Contributory infringement requires that they know about the infringement when they can do something about it. Napster could have shut down its network at any time, or blocked searches/transfers of copyrighted files, but it didnt, so they were guilty of contributory infringement. If all the gnutella/fasttrack client writers shut down all their servers it wouldnt affect the networks at all. They have no control over what the users are doing any more, so they arent contributing to the infringement.
In addition, the momentary potential for liability existed when the software was transferred from the Company to the User, and then if the Company should have reason to believe that the user will use it for infringing uses. As this information is not available to the Company at the time of software transfer to the User, they were not liable.
Furthurmore, liability does not exist because "those comanies could shut their doors and turn off their computers, and the respective etworks would still work fine."
Quoting from the judgement
"Napster possessed the ability to monitor and control its network, and routinely exercised its ability to exclude particular users from it. id. In a virtual sense, the "premises" of the infringement were the Napster network i teelf and Napster had a duty to exercise its reserved right and ability to police those premises to the fullest extent possible- The client software was an essential component of the integrated Napster system, and Napster s obligation to police necessarily extended to the client software itself. Such is not the case here- Defendants provide software that communicates across networks that are entirely outside Defendants control.
Another *very important* point:
Although it may be possible that a new version of morpheus could have been written (by streamcast) that excluded the ability to locate files with a given fingerprint (a given SHA1, for instance), they would not be required to do so as the content was not being indexed or hosted via that Company's systems.
To quote again:
"However, whether these safeguards are practicable is immaterial to this analysis, as the obligation to \\police" arises only where a defendant has the "right and abilityfl to supervise the infrinqing conduc t . See NaDster , 239 F. 3d at 1023; Fonovisa , 76 F. 3d at 262. Plaintiffs' argument - that Defendants could do more to limit the functionali ty of their software with respect to copyrighted works forgets the critical distinction, broached above, between the Napster systemH and the software distributed by Defendants."
In the case of Grokster , the network is the propriety FastTrack network, which is clearly not controlled by Defendant Grokster. In the case of StreamCast, the network is Gnutella , the open- source nature of which apparently places it outside the control of any single entity."
This is an important decision, which could affect the path of p2p development, and my personal livelihood.
Once again, a very satisfied and relieved
-dave-
Get yourself a legitimate high-preformance Gnutella client here!!
The pig browse. With Google. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.
Read the decision -- I know it's a bit long, but it's very easy reading for a court order. The order specifically says that there is copyright infringement going on. The only thing this does is absolve Grokster and Streamcast of responsibility for it because they're not "substantially contributing" to the infringement. One of the key points in their defense was the fact that they could all close their doors tomorrow and there would be no change in what was being traded on the networks. The other key point they made was that there was a substantial non-infringing use for the technology. There's a huge difference between their position and the college students who were working hard to ensure people could trade music and movies -- they can't claim ignorance, and they likely won't be able to claim non-infringing use of their networks either.
Also, as soon as they (the college students) shut their networks down the file-trading stopped (over their networks at least) -- this case is mostly about gnutella and whether or not Grokster and Streamcast control gnutella and kazaa.... Neither of them do(they control some software used to access the networks, but there is no control over the networks -- that was a key point in their defense), and as a result they walk -- your college students won't likely be so lucky, although I think the lawsuit is ridiculous.
I do not read or respond to AC's. If you want a discussion, log in. Otherwise, don't waste your time.
No, the ISP (Verizon) case is absolutely nothing like this one. The judge in this decision very clearly states that illegal copyright infringement is going on, just that it's not the responsibility of the software provider to police this. That's a good decision.
So whose responsibility is the illegal copying? The person doing the copying, of course! In other words, it's the ISP users who are being protected by Verizon that are really responsible for their actions, and should be responsible for their actions. This is also good.
So why is Verizon fighting this? The key issue in that case is that in order to compel the identity of the users, the RIAA is saying they can just say they need the info. No judicial oversight, no review, no nothing except RIAA saying "we need it." And that is fundamentally wrong. You're putting ISPs at the mercy of another private organization who can decide on whatever whim they want that they can violate the ISP users privacy.
So it's not an issue of copyrighted file sharing being "ok". These two cases address entirely separate issues, so shouldn't be confused!
And in neither of the two cases does anyone claim that sharing copyrighted files is ok.