Petteri Pyyny
7 Nov 2001 7:45
Electronic Frontier Foundation (or EFF) will defend P2P service operator MusicCity in its case against movie studios and record labels.
Record labels and movie studios (and their representing organizations, RIAA and MPAA) sued MusicCity and other FastTrack-based P2P services in this summer over copyright infringement.
Now, EFF is defending MusicCity, because it feels that MusicCity's case is significantly different from Napster's case where Napster was found guilty to copyright infringements. EFF and many independent analysts point out that Napster operated the central server that indexed the files shared in its network and in other hand, MusicCity/FastTrack network is totally independent -- there are no central servers or anything that any company could control. Kazaa, Grokster and MusicCity are just pure software vendors that provide tools to access this distributed network -- none of them controls the network in any way.
EFF has hired some really experienced lawyers to back its case -- one of the lawyers is from the original legal team of Sony in its '80s case where movie studios and TV networks sued Sony over its BetaMax VCRs claiming that VCRs should be found illegal in U.S. As most of us can understand, Sony won this case. EFF is also defending 2600.com in its famous "DeCSS" case against MPAA.
The case was filed in Los Angeles and court dates have not been set yet.