Slashdot Mirror
Grokster Shutting Down?
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo news is reporting that Grokster is shutting down. In a settlement with Hollywood and the music industry Grokster will be permanently banned from 'participating directly or indirectly in the theft of copyrighted files and requires the company to stop giving away its software.'" A continuation on their deal with Mashboxx, or the end of grokster entirely?
Hah. The "spirit" of a file sharing network. What a load of crap.
One thing threatening Open Source today--piracy.
As we have already seen, the GPL is under attack from evil forces known as "pirates." These shadowy folk silently steal source code and violate the GPL, infringing on the rights of GPL authors. They are nothing more than thieves getting a free ride off the work of others, and I for one am disgusted at the idea of it. As you can see in the previous article, clearly Slashdot is also sickened by the idea of copyright infringement and piracy.
Some have even called for a lawsuit against these pirate thieves. Suing individual infringers has always been a position that Slashdot and its readership has supported, so it's only fair that the original GPL authors protect their rights and safeguard their material from being stolen in the future. I think we should all support any lawsuits against these infringers to protect the rights of GPL authors everywhere.
I applaud Slashdot and its readers for always taking a proactive stance against piracy and copyright infringement in general, and I would like to join the cause against this "source code theft." Piracy is a major threat facing OSS today. Thankfully, Slashdot always seems to take the side of content creators and never on the side of pirates, freeloaders, and other thieves.
Wink, nudge, etc.
"Sufferin' succotash."
And this is where they shut down the AC, because you had to go and participate (directly or indirectly) in copyright infringement.
Their business model is only half of it. Freeloaders are the other half.
No, the problem is that their business model does not take into account freeloaders, much less try to make use of them, and that is why it is obsolete.
There are content creation business models that co-opt the natural human desire to share stuff - the RIAA and MPAA just don't want to accept that they have to change in order to keep up with the changing times.