eDonkey Tells Congress It's Throwing in the Towel

An anonymous reader writes "Sam Yagen, President of eDonkey, testified at the Judiciary committee's hearing 'Protecting Copyright and Innovation in a Post-Grokster World'. It was there he told the committee that he is throwing in the towel. 'The Grokster standard requires divining a company's intent, the decision was essentially a call to litigate. This is critical because most startup companies just don't have very much money. Whereas I could have managed to pay for a summary judgment hearing under Betamax, I simply couldn't afford the protracted litigation needed to prove my case in court under Grokster. Without that financial ability, exiting the business was our only option despite my confidence that we never induced infringement and that we would have prevailed under the Grokster standard.'"

Comments

And why not?

[Henry V .009]

Why shouldn't he be sued? You've got to admit that he's doing something fairly shady. No reasonable person can claim anything except that his plan to achieve popularity with eDonkey was through facilitating illegal file-sharing.

Great model for Republican legislation

[laupsavid]

I'm sure our Republican Congressmen are thinking how great the Grokster legislation is working, then, and will use it as a model for many other situations where they want to make it impossible for new businesses to compete with old ones. I think at this rate, in 20 years or so the US economy will be on par with places like Serbia or Mongolia.

Re:Welcome

[RWerp]

You're saying just because you have one less way to download other people's work without paying?