The US Supreme Court has ruled that file-sharing companies can be held liable for secondary infringement for what users do with their software. The very surprising ruling will most likely result in a flood of legal action against the creators of file-sharing networks such as Grokster and Morpheus and other companies. The unanimous ruling is a victory for recording
companies and film studios in what is widely seen as one of the most
important copyright cases in years.
BBC article here.
Supreme Court decision here.
EFF response here.
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I’m not so sure this is the end of P2P and for 2 reasons. Justice Ginsberg says this is about the way in which Grokster and Streamcast promoted their software not about the software itself (http://www.managingrights.com/2005/06/justice_bader_s.html}
The opinion implies that if there were P2P applications that were not promoted as vehicles for infringement, they would not run afoul of the law even if they were used in part to infringe.
The decision just might create opportunities for new players with P2P technologies but with no record of actively encouraging copyright infringement to succeed.
Lastly, the case was remanded back for trial or summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t trial, but stranger things have happened.
It is clearly not over for P2P I agree. Just a surprising setback.
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