<\/div>\n
The significant difference between Grokster and Sony is that whereas Sony suggested that a mere potentiality <\/span>of legitimate use would be enough to save a technology, Grokster looks to the intent of the distributor. Grokster, whatever their denials, clearly intended that their product be used to share copyrighted files (for example, they explicitly offered Top 40 tracks, bound to be copyrighted, and also made it quite clear that they sought to be successors to the then recently deceased Napster). <\/p>\nFuture cases then would seem to hinge not on the nature of the technology, but on the business plan behind it. The argument of MGM, that software developers who encourage sharing of copyrighted material are using the property of another as start-up capital, would seem then to have been accepted by the court.<\/p>\n
Much of the early comment on the case focussed simply on the headline result – a 9-0 victory for MGM. But if one reads the judgement, it’s clear that there’s very little new law here, merely a win on the facts alone<\/span> for MGM. This decision won’t stop people from downloading, and it won’t stop them from developing new P2P software. All it will stop is people trying to make money from file sharing. And given that there are plenty of music fans and geeks out there who just want free music and respect for their programming skills respectively, I would suggest that the music industry will today be suffering the same “What now?” feeling they had after the Napster case. They should stop whining, get with the programme (which of course is iTunes) and quit wasting their money by using writs to try and hold back the tide.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The significant difference between Grokster and Sony is that whereas Sony suggested that a mere potentiality of legitimate use would be enough to save a technology, Grokster looks to the intent of the distributor. Grokster, whatever their denials, clearly intended that their product be used to share copyrighted files (for example, they explicitly offered Top 40 tracks, bound to be copyrighted, and also made it quite clear that they sought to be successors to the then recently deceased Napster). Future cases then would seem to hinge not on the nature of the technology, but on the business plan behind it. The argument of MGM, that software developers who encourage sharing of copyrighted material are using the property of another as start-up capital, would seem then to have been accepted by the court. Much of the early comment on the case focussed simply on the headline result – a 9-0 victory for MGM. But if one reads the judgement, it’s clear that there’s very little new law here, merely a win on the facts alone for MGM. This decision won’t stop people from downloading, and it won’t stop them from developing new P2P software. All it will stop is people trying to make money from file sharing. And given that there are plenty of music fans and geeks out there who just want free music and respect for their programming skills respectively, I would suggest that the music industry will today be suffering the same “What now?” feeling they had after the Napster case. They should stop whining, get with the programme (which of course is iTunes) and quit wasting their money by using writs to try and hold back the tide.","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tuppenceworth.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}