aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, March 28, 2005

MGM v Grokster

The New York Times has a good background story on the MGM v Grokster case that will be heard this week by the Supreme Court:

The case, M.G.M. v. Grokster, is in many ways the culmination of five years of escalating legal, technical and rhetorical attacks against file-sharing systems and their users by the music industry. It is being eagerly followed by a range of media and technology companies because the court may use this case to redefine the reach of copyright in the era of iPods and TiVo.

But no matter how the court rules, both music executives and file-sharing advocates...agree that it will probably always be possible for fans to find loads of free music with a few clicks of a mouse.

Still, the case will determine whether file sharing can continue to be promoted by companies like LimeWire and Sharman Networks, which makes Kazaa, that operate in public and earn profits from advertising and software sales, or whether the software will be written and distributed by shadowy players on the fringes of the law.

The article appears on the same day as a wrong-headed editorial, which is effectively rebutted by Ernest Miller:

There are lots of technologies that deprive people who create of making money for their creation. The VCR, for one. The VCR is used to infringe copyright, which it seems, automatically takes the money out of the hands of creators. Should the evolution of the VCR have been stopped? Brilliant editorial New York Times, bravo. Cheap rhetorical tricks, unsubstantiated statistics, and complete lack of an actual solution. Is there any error that wasn’t made?

Via CopyFight’s Donna Wentworth who points to a wealth of information on the case.

UPDATE: In this post Wentworth looks at the research on the impact of P2P music sharing on CD sales:

In addition to a lack of negative effects, the study argues, there is evidence for a positive correlation between sharing music and purchasing more new music.