Jari Ketola
8 Oct 2004 15:52
Hollywood movie studios and record companies have asked the United States Supreme Court to overturn an earlier ruling which found file sharing companies not liable for copyright infringements carried out by using their software.
Both MPAA and RIAA signed the petition in which they said that if the ruling remains, the value of copyrighted work will be badly undermined.
"This is one of the most important copyright cases ever to reach this court," the groups said in papers filed with the court. "Resolution of the question presented here will largely determine the value, indeed the very significance, of copyright in the digital era."
Centralized P2P services, such as Napster, have been forced to shut down by the recording industry before, but in August a federal appeals court upheld a ruling from April 2003 stated that Grokster Ltd, Streamcast Networks Inc (Morpheus). and Sharman Networks Ltd (Kazaa) are fundamentally different from, for example, Napster. By manufacturing a software that enables people to exchange files doesn't make them liable for the copyright infringements carried out by the users.
"There is no reason the Supreme Court should review the (lower court's) decision," Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, said in a statement. "That case was based on the principles established in the 1984 Betamax case, which has led to the largest and most profitable period of technological innovation in this country's history. Consumers, industry and our country have all benefited as a result."
The entertainment industry, however, feels that P2P software companies should have a responsibility to design their software in such a manner that illegal content can be filtered out.
In reality the demands are based on the fact that it might be technically possible. Yet it is nevertheless just as absurd as demanding VCR manufacturers to make devices that cannot record movies.
Something is seriously wrong.
Source: News.com