High Court Agrees to Hear File-Sharing Dispute

stkpogo pastes: "The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider whether two Internet file-sharing services may be held responsible for their customers' online swapping of copyrighted songs and movies. Justices will review a lower ruling in favor of Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., which came as a blow to recording companies and movie studios seeking to stop the illegal distribution of their works." Grokster won in the lower courts, but the studios are appealing. This case, when finally decided, will be equivalent to the Betamax case 20 years ago which ensured that VCRs were legal.

Comments

BitTorrent To Be Next Target

[s7uar7]

It looks like BitTorrent may be next on the list. MPAA spokesman declines to say whether the trade group intends to sue Cohen. They'd have a harder time proving that BitTorrent is primarily used for copyright infringement though, due to the many legitimate uses.

Re:Quotation from Chairman Tom

[headkase]

So basically a country can choose between having more wealth or having more innovation.
You know, choosing wealth realistically means that any increased wealth will probally go to people who are already obscenely wealthy. While having more innovation would redistribute the wealth into cheaper and more valuable devices for the average person instead.
Maybe all it would take would be for a market as big as the US' to reject the US push and expansion of intellectual property laws through the WIPO treaties into other markets. Imagine if China said screw you - smaller markets could just say ok, we've got a large enough market to replace the US and we don't have to live by as many rules while doing business there.