A blow to all our futures
I’m just so pissed right now.
“The United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous ruling…” = fucking slimeballs.
This totally effects the fuure of DLAs (digital lifestyle aggregators.) I want to store my music, video and photos - the content I BOUGHT and access it from anywhere I go.
We want to provide the tools to do that.
We’ll ask all our users to agree to terms which say “I understand that the copyrights laws forbid me from illegally distributing content I haven’t paid for.”
But we sure as hell will protect our fair use rights!
So to what limits can our customers ’share’ the music they’ve legally purchased?
That’s the question.
June 27th, 2005 at 9:30 am
Marc: The limit is absolute: for all practical purposes, your customers can’t share purchased music at all, ever, in any way. Unless you’re willing to implement Microsoft/Apple DRM schemes, of course, or you have the spare cash to out-lobby the RIAA and MPAA.
Open “sharing” is dead and buried. Sad as that is, it ain’t gonna change.
The upshot is that all-you-can-eat music “rental” services just got a huge shot in the arm. If there are no longer any benefits to owning a copy of a song, why bother owning it?
June 27th, 2005 at 10:22 am
I think this just means … well, not too much. Great, we can’t share files in the USA. Ok, it is probably legal in some other country. Looks like the Groksters of the world will do their R&D somewhere else, while depriving the USA of yet another opportunity.
June 28th, 2005 at 8:13 pm
Am I missing something here? The ruling was more about wilfull infringement. This was about the hubris that Grokster showed in trying to wrap itself in the Sony v. Universal City Studios decision. They could have discouraged copyright violations (while I don’t agree w/current copyright terms it’s besides the point as the decision had nothing to do w/this), they could have avoided marketing and helping their users through support inquiries, on how to willingly violate the established laws, but they didn’t. Here’s a useful paragraph to review fm the decision (”respondents” refers to Grokster):
–
Discovery revealed that billions of files are shared across peer-to-peer networks each month. Respondents are aware that users employ their software primarily to download copyrighted files, although the decentralized networks do not reveal which files are copied, and when. Respondents have sometimes learned about the infringement directly when users have e-mailed questions regarding copyrighted works, and respondents have replied with guidance. Respondents are not merely passive recipients of information about infringement. The record is replete with evidence that when they began to distribute their free software, each of them clearly voiced the objective that recipients use the software to download copyrighted works and took active steps to encourage infringement. After the notorious filesharing service, Napster, was sued by copyright holders for facilitating copyright infringement, both respondents promoted and marketed themselves as Napster alternatives. They receive no revenue from users, but, instead, generate income by selling advertising space, then streaming the advertising to their users. As the number of users increases, advertising opportunities are worth more. There is no evidence that either respondent made an effort to filter copyrighted material from usersÂ’ downloads or otherwise to impede the sharing of copyrighted files.
–
You can fight the good fight, but some times there are repercussions to how you choose to have that fight, and Grokster is now sadly having to deal with those. It’s unfortunate as I dislike the RIAA as much as any one, but the fact remains that Grokster could have deployed this technology and simply taken some precautions and could have come out of this unscaved, but instead they chose to thumb their nose at authority and hence the consequences of their actions.