Grokster, the Little Engine that Could, Chugs Up One Last Hill [LWN.net]

February 2, 2005
By Pamela Jones, Editor of Groklaw

Grokster is the Little Engine That Could. So far, against overwhelming odds, it has successfully dodged every legal bullet a massive horde of entertainment companies - some 28 of them, representing the interests of the music recording and movie industry - have thrown at it. Now, there is one more hill, and it's the steepest of them all, a hearing before the US Supreme Court in March.

There is a lot more at stake than just the fate of a couple of peer-to-peer file sharing services. What's at stake, to quote from one of the many amici briefs filed in this high-profile case (this one by the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetCoalition) is nothing less than this: it's a push to overturn the court's ruling in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984) (the "Betamax case") and replace it "with new standards that would as a practical matter give the entertainment industry a veto power over the development of innovative products and services."

[Editor's note: due to the length of this article, we have not put the whole thing inline in the Weekly Edition. The full text of PJ's Grokster article may be found on its own page.]

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Does it really matter?

Posted Feb 3, 2005 17:00 UTC (Thu) by b7j0c (subscriber, #27559) [Link]

I appreciate the concern on this issue but the comments of the US courts on file sharing seem to have no greater impact than their collective comments on J-walking. Apparently it is illegal but everyone does it. I would even go so far as to say that the legal issues have been beneficial in fostering the creation of very sophisticated p2p techniques and implementations that would otherwise would not exist.

Does it really matter?

Posted Feb 4, 2005 0:14 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Are there corporations with huge legal budgets suing big companies that make the shoes that are used in jaywalking? Because that's what's at stake here.

A finding that Grokster Ltd is responsible for all that copyright infringement would in fact be significant. Grokster would cease to exist, millions of illegal copies would not get made, and lots of wealth would be shifted from the principals of Grokster Ltd and from file sharers to music and movie publishers.