James Delahunty
28 Mar 2005 15:36
Billionaire entrepreneur, Mark Cuban has promised to help Grokster financially in its battle against major record labels and movie studios. Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the dispute between StreamCast and the media companies. Hollywood is depending on the high court to reverse two lower court decisions that found developers and owners of decentralised P2P networks not liable for any copyright infringement that is committed using the software. They will also have to convince the Supreme Court to rule against the Betamax decision which made many things like VCR's legal because they have legitimate purposes.
"We are a digital company that is platform agnostic, bits are bits. We don’t care how they are distributed, just that they are. We want our content to get to the customer in the way the customer wants to receive it, when they want to receive it, at a price that is of value to them. Simple business." Mr Cuban said on his blog. "Unless Grokster loses to MGM in front of the Supreme Court. If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only."
Cuban owns movie theatres and also the rights to several movies and TV shows and simply believes that P2P technology should have the right to thrive. "It will be a sad day when American corporations start to hold their US digital innovations and inventions overseas to protect them from the RIAA, moving important jobs overseas with them," Cuban wrote. "That’s what happens if the RIAA is able to convince the Supreme Court of the USA that rather than the truth, which is, Software doesn’t steal content, people steal content, they convince them that if it can impact the music business, it should be outlawed because somehow it will."
Not many details were given on what financing he will offer or how much but we do know that he has pledged to fund the EFF's (Electronic Frontier Foundation) defence of Grokster. Whatever way you look at it he is brave to stand up against his peers and side with P2P. "This is the big content companies, against me. Mark Cuban and my little content company."
Sources:
The Register
Cuban's Blog