Monday, June 27, 2005

Grokster Loses

Grokster and Streamcast lost today, but it looks like a win for P2P. Although today's decision squashes two very popular networks, it does so only because these networks were pretty open about the true intention of their software (copyright infringement). A quick reading of the opinion gives the impression that it might very well be Ok to distribute P2P software provided you market it as a general purpose tool (eg, BitTorrent).

It was nice to see how the Court pointed out that the lower court's opinion rested on an erroneous reading of Sony and left it at that. Rather than trying to settle the question for good, they issued a very narrow decision and left themselve's plenty of wiggle room for future decisions.

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