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MGM v. Grokster Date Set
An anonymous reader writes "The Supreme Court has set March 29th as the date for oral arguments to begin in the Grokster trial. As we all know the final ruling will have ramifications on the tech world well beyond P2P. A decision is expected by end of July."
Date Set for Morpheus/Grokster
By Jon Newton 1/20/05
March 29 is the date set for oral arguments in MGM v Grokster when the major movie studios and Big Music cartel will once again try to force a decision saying p2p companies can be held responsible if customers use their p2p software to infringe copyrights.
The entertainment industry has already lost once on this in District Court, and again at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
But Hollywood won't take an unequivocal court decision for an answer and is now trying to bludgeon the US the Supreme Court into reversing.
"The lower court rulings were based on the Supreme Court's landmark decision in the 1984 Sony Betamax case, which determined that Sony was not liable for copyright violations by users of the Betamax VCR," says the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) which is representing Morpheus owner StreamCast Networks.
A final decision is expected by the end of July 2005.
Anyone want to place a bet? :)
Defenestrate Windows...
While the original Betamax case was over 20 years ago now, there are three current justices on the Supreme Court who presided over the original case.
O'Connor and Stevens voted in favor of Sony
and Rehnquist voted against.
Source
It will be interesting to see how this case turns out.
I've got an idea. We could rename p2p to something else. You know, kinda like how solicitors get around the no-call list. After all, they're not soliciting, their giving me "curtisy calls".
I think most /.ers will agree with me that p2p has become the life blood of the internet. Even look at the World of Warcraft patch distribution system. Its p2p! Should they be sued?
Im sure many of the unenlightened solicitors would say AYE!
I hope an independent film maker is making a documentary about this event. I mean it's perfect for an Indie film It's got a big bad business, a large maybe-bad business, and they are duking it out in the courts.
And after it's all over, they can distribute it in OGG format using Bit Torrent.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
It's going to take them four months to write "Shut the fuck up, MGM"?
I love America and everything, but he who has the deeper pockets ultimately wins.
The following quote at the end of the 9th Circuit's opinion really sums up the situation quite well.
"Further, as we have observed, we live in a quicksilver technological environment with courts ill-suited to fix the flow of internet innovation. The introduction of new technology is always disruptive to old markets, and particularly to those copyright owners whose works are sold through well-established distribution mechanisms. Yet, history has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine, or an MP3 player. Thus, it is prudent for courts to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories for the purpose of addressing specific market abuses, despite their apparent present magnitude."
Why don't we sue knife, gun, and tobacco manufacturers as well? Oh wait...
All your Sybase are belong to us.
They'll give up based on what the Supreme Court says.
No, they won't.
The only problem is that the 9th Circuit is the most-reversed circuit there is.
Is that by number of cases reversed, or is it by percentage of cases reversed? Some circuits just hear more appellate cases than other circuits. For example, if you have 100 cases and 17 reversed in one circuit, isn't that better than 10 cases and 4 reversed in another circuit?
Betamax was a pure hardware device, a simple video recorder. It was not a program library, a catalog, or a distribution system. Dangerous to assume that the court will regard the Betamax decision as controlling.
God help humanity if Groakster loses. They are not just fighting for rights, they are fighting for the future of communication itself.
No no no, it's the video games fault now, you're like 5 or 10 years out of date.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
I've been reading the documents involved, particularly the Ninth Circuit's decision and the **AA's petition for cert (request that the Supreme Court hear the case). It's been a while since I read Betamax, so I'll have to go back and read it next.
But quotes from the petition are sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes absurd. Most of the petition is **AA saying, "The Ninth Circuit misinterpreted Betamax! Look at the Seventh Circuit; they got it right!" Much of the arguments in the **AA's petition revolve around the argument that since the network could have been designed to block infringement, it should. (Personally, I doubt that the network could be so designed, since not even the mighty **AA has demonstrated an ability to effectively distinguish infringing uses. But most of the arguments have talked about the ability to block, rather than the technically more problematic ability to identify.)
One of the sidesplitters in the petition is this:
Similarly, under the Ninth Circuit's test a defendant's ability to block infringement is rendered irrelevant except in the narrowest circumstances.
The narrowest circumstances? The circumstances we have to consider are those on what we call planet Earth, not whatever alternative dimension that the **AA would like to live in. Indeed, the problem they have is that the "ability to block infringement" is only considered relevant if they actually, in real life do have such ability.
Oh, well, those are narrow circumstances indeed; we should instead consider if, in any imaginable world, they might have such an ability, and bend reality to match that world. Sorry, guys, we have to consider actual ability to block, not what they might have if they set themselves up exactly like Napster.
Most of the petition reads like this. The **AA feel that, because the network was designed without central control, that's evidence that they're guilty. It should have been designed with central control, and should prevent any infringing uses, because that would make the **AA happy. Because it's not designed that way, then Streamcast/Grokster are guilty of contributory and vicarious infringement.
The Ninth Circuit's opinion, by the way, is also a good read. Much less maddening than this petition, for sure.
The Betamax ruling was that the maker of a product - and the court repeatedly used the word product - which was "capable of substantial noninfringing uses" was not liable for any infringment which may or may not be commited by people who use that product.
I'd be absolutely facinated to hear any logic how and why a different liability standard would exist between "software products" and "hardware products".
The only reasons I can see for this new case to go any differently would be emotional bias (if they find P2P a less sympathetic defendant than VCRs) or simply because there are different judges not and they want to write different law. But in either case I don't see how they could reasonably do that without effectively throwing VCRs back into contributory infringment for the infringment committed with them. But who knows? Maybe we'll wind up with an "infringment tax" slapped on all new VCRs.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Making companies liable for illegal actions consciously performed by end users of their products is an extremely bad precedent to set. If I play my music too loudly and am fined for breaking city ordinance, I don't think MGM wants to pay the fine because it's the soundtrack to a movie they own. Basically, even if there is a legitimate justification for shutting down p2p, this is a bad way to go about it.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
...at least the one in the CA bill recently, and essentially a P2P program is defined as a program capable of both upload and download. Like say your browser (http upload forms), email client, basicly everything people consider to be the Internet. The only thing that wouldn't qualify are the dumb terminals of the 70s. It is a blanket coverage to take out whichever application bugs them.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
That plans to sue the Government at all levels for the provision and maintenance of roads .. They have indisputable proof that this "roads" infrastrucure has been used in over 80% of all crimes.
Paul
www.opencouncil.org
Open
<disclaimer>IANAL. This is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, consult a lawyer.</disclaimer>
Do you like Japanese imports?
to distribute large files, specifically OS distributions. even if 99% of its use is movies or whatever, that doesnt change the fact that nothing in its design shows any illegal motovation.
I don't know, but I have never seen anyone do it. I know that some people will chime in and say they use it at school or at work or they are a musician themselves, but these are in the vast minority.
heres a clue: not everyone on the internet is downloading movies. some of us have legitmate reasons.
heres a chime in, every use of bittorrent i have done has been for os distribution, and i know several others who have done the same. when fedora came out, almost all of us (LUG in the valley in Los Angeles) used bittorrent to get it.
it really is a good method. even commercial entities are using it.
heres hoping some os distribution makes a p2p update protocol. maybe one like ubuntu or gentoo...
First they came out for Napster
and I did not speak out because I was not Napster
Then they came out for 1-2-3 Studios
and I did not speak out, because I was not 1-2-3 Studios
Then they came out for Grokster
and I did not speak out, because I was not Grokster
Then they came for me,
and I squished them..who are they kidding, I'm Microsoft!
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
The only thing bittorrent does that in any way facilitates piracy is that someone hosting warez doesn't also get hit with a huge bandwidth bill. That's all; other than that, it might as well be nothing more than a webserver.
As for legal uses, besides the stuff on http://www.legaltorrents.com/, and linux ISOs (bittorrent is really
The solution? An internal bittorrent network. Easy to set up centrally and automate on all the machines, and it takes advantage of the large intra-lab bandwidth. The previous solution - rsyncing from the central machine - would take 5-6 hours and spike the central server's CPU almost the whole time. (the way the disk images change is apparently not rsync-friendly) This solution takes less than an hour with no serious CPU load on the central server; after all, the tracker is only watching a few hundred clients at once.
(Disclaimer: I didn't do this, I just was talking to the guy who did)