Slashdot Mirror
Lessig on Streamcast/Grokster Decision
scubacuda writes "Lessig has an editorial in Financial Times regarding
the recent court decision in favor Streamcast (which distributes "Morpheus") and Grokster. 'The wisdom of this rule is something innovators in Silicon Valley are increasingly coming to see. When courts intervene to maintain copyright's balance, the inevitable consequence is that innovation is harmed. If every innovator with technologies affecting content must bear the burden of a lawsuit before his innovation can be allowed, there will be many fewer innovations in the distribution and creation of content. That in turn will harm artists and technologists alike. Better to let the innovation happen, and then consider whether the change caused by the innovation is so significant as to require new legislation by the legislature.'"
Lawrence Lessig: Grokster's victory for innovation
By Lawrence Lessig
Published: May 9 2003 16:35 | Last Updated: May 9 2003 16:35
In 1998, in a string of judicial decisions, courts in the United States found Napster responsible for the copyright infringement that occurred on its file-sharing network. The burden of these decisions effectively closed down the company. Last month, a district court held that neither Streamcast (which distributes "Morpheus") nor Grokster could be held responsible for the copyright infringement that occurred on the file-sharing networks they supported. (They both initially supported the "FastTrack" network; Streamcast now builds its client on the "Gnutella" platform.) Thus, Napster: bad; Grokster/Morpheus: good.
This decision has surprised commentators. From 10,000 feet, the two file-sharing networks look very much alike. But they are technically quite different, and that difference clearly mattered to the court. Yet more important than the technology is the difference in judicial attitude that the district court displayed. It is this difference that would really matter if upheld on appeal.
Grokster and Morpheus run on peer-to-peer networks, which means that content is shared not between them and their users but between the users of the network themselves. This was true of Napster as well. The difference is that Napster kept a central list of all the available files, which enabled it to control who got access to what content. That meant that Napster could be held responsible for copyright infringement happening on its network. Because Napster benefited from the infringement and had the opportunity to stop it, the courts held Napster responsible.
The design of the Morpheus/Grokster networks, however, means that the defendants do not have the same opportunity. Because there is no central list of files that can be shared, neither Grokster nor Streamcast are able to control the content that users access. There is therefore no way for either company to take steps to block infringing sharing.
No doubt, the court observed, these companies benefited from the sharing. And no doubt, it went on, peer-to-peer networks were designed in part to avoid the ability to block infringing sharing. But because the law requires that there be both a benefit from the infringement and an opportunity to do something to stop it, District Court Judge Stephen Wilson was not willing to find either company responsible.
The reason the court hesitated is a good one. As the district court reminded us, the practice in copyright cases has not been for courts to expand liability in response to new technologies. It is instead that any such expansion be done by Congress. This principle was the basis upon which the Supreme Court decided that Sony was not responsible for the copyright infringement that the VCR enabled. As the Court reasoned, no doubt Sony could have designed the VCR to disable the ability of users to record shows from the air. But whether Sony should have been so required was a decision for Congress. The only question that a court should ask is whether the technology is "capable of substantial noninfringing uses". If it is, whether its use should on balance be considered infringing is a question for policymakers, not courts.
In the VCR case, Congress eventually decided that the use should be permitted - even though, without doubt, many people were copying copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright owner, and, no doubt, Sony benefited from that copying. But as Congress and the courts well recognise, copyright law is not absolute. The lines that Congress draws must balance the interests of users and copyright owners to the end of spurring innovation. That balance is inherently political. And therefore, when a new technology changes the balance, the appropriate role for a court is to leave it to the political branch to decide whether the change is to be allowed or to be remedied through new legislation.
The wisdom of this rule is s
No. 'Supernodes' take care of the cataloguing of files on KazAa. New Gnutella distros use 'SuperPeers' for the same thing. And any user can turn their computer into a supernode or superpeer (at considerable bandwidth expense). So there's no central server keeping the network afloat.
Boo frickin hoo.
As we have been repeatedly shown, the music industry is a business, pure and simple. It has always been like that to some degree, but now it seems it is purely a business. In any business, you take risks, and you stand the chance that you might go under. This happens to every business. If you can't change with the times, you just might collapse. This is what is happening to the music business. They refuse to accept the change that is happening. They will not accept online music, even though online music won't be stopped. If they can't deal with it, they will die as a business. I can live with that.
If the music business as we know it dies, it won't be such a bad thing. Maybe we will go back to the majority of artists actually making music instead of simply "performing". It would be like a forest fire wiping out everything. Eventually, it will grow back. Music is too important to our culture, to everyone's culture, for it to die off totally. I don't want the music to die off, just the business that surrounds it. It is just another business, and brings no real value to the people who love music. If the music industry dies, it is simply evolution.
The ironic part is that the music industry has created and fueled this need for music. They have trained people to consume consume consume. CDs are $11.99 for the first few weeks they come out, to get people to buy them. After that, they go on the rack at $18. Why? So you can buy the next latest release. They created it so that we have portable music in portable cassette and CD players. They want us to want music. So now we want music! We want to hear it all the time, we have the capabilities to store thousands of songs on our computers, to take them with us wherever we go in smaller and smaller devices. So, RIAA, you have created a monster that you can't control any more. Reap what you sow, motherfuckers.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
According to Declan McCullagh the P2P endgame is now approaching and it will be down to congress to sort this out.
He argues convincingly that the law has been changed in the past by congress when copyrights have been seen to be under threat by a judical decision, so we should expect the same thing to happen here.
This is exactly what the judge in the Grokster case has suggested, so expect an RIAA/MPAA sponsored P2P bill in congress sometime soon...
Karma me!
Downloading music file off a server is not file sharing and has absolutely nothing to do with P2P.