Mobile/PDA About Us Advertise here


		User name	Password

		Not registered yet? Register here. Lost your password? Click here.

Browse by topic

News

Supreme Court to hear P2P case

22 January 2005 17:57 by James "Dela" Delahunty | 1 comment

The United States Supreme Court said it will hear oral arguments in an ongoing dispute over the legality of filesharing. The entertainment industry has been using every legal weapon at its disposal to attempt to squash filesharing. They argue that P2P networks are mostly used for illegal activities on a massive scale and that means that they should not only be ruled illegal but the developers and owners of such networks should be liable for the copyright infringement that took place on the network. On the P2P side, the argument is straight forward. While P2P networks do allow activity such as copyright infringement to take place, they do not promote it and P2P networks have been proven to have many legitimate uses.

That aspect of the ongoing dispute resembles the Sony Betamax ruling which ruled that Sony was not liable for any illegal activity a customer used their equipment for, and the equipment was legal because it had many legitimate uses also. The case the Supreme Court will hear began with the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filing a lawsuit against the Grokster and Morpheus Networks, which they lost in lower courts. The Supreme Court will hear the case on March 29th.

Source:
Betanews

Permalink to this article

P2P case hits Supreme Court (30 March 2005)

Billionaire backs P2P firms (28 March 2005)

Artists rally support behind P2P (1 March 2005)

University student downloaders are not as evil as they seem (6 February 2005)

RIAA sues another 717 P2P users (28 January 2005)

MPAA launches second round of lawsuits (28 January 2005)

MPAA releases software for parents (28 January 2005)

Hollywood claims P2P case is not about technology (25 January 2005)

P2P networks are here to stay (23 January 2005)

First P2P piracy convictions for Justice Dept (19 January 2005)

California Senator wants to outlaw P2P (19 January 2005)

RIAA loses another case (5 January 2005)

InternetMovies.com may take MPAA to the Supreme Court (29 December 2004)

Supreme Court to reconsider the P2P case (11 December 2004)

StreamCast asks Supreme Court to reject RIAA/MPAA requests (9 November 2004)

« Previous news article
Sony files patent for wireless gaming techniques

Next news article »
VSO DivXtoDVD guide added

Post your comment

Discuss this article!
Labrat (Member) 23 January 2005 17:29
You know this will have to come to a conclusion sometime. And hopefully in the sharers favor. Guess time will tell. [ + quote]