Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Because of programs like Bit Torrent, we may see more INDUCE Act styled legislation even if Grokster loses.

Bit Torrent is not the easy target that Napster and Grokster have provided to copyright owners. Legitimate uses of it are not a mere token amount as they are with Grokster, plus it doens't point you to other users who have Torrent files, you have to go find them yourself. Will major copyright owners be forced to embrace it (or something similar) to distribute content or will they try to defeat it through new legislation? The Grokster decision probably will not be broad enough to capture Bit Torrent even if it turns out that Grokster gets a spanking. An INDUCE Act type bill may do the trick though - assuming such legislation narrows the Sony Betamax (substantial non-infringing uses) doctrine and lowers the intent/knowledge/ability to control standards for third party liability copyright infringement.

Even if Grokster loses their appeal we'll see INDUCE Act style legislation proposed again. Copyright owners can make the easy argument that legislation is the only way to deal with fast-changing technology, the technology must be killed off at inception, because the courts simply are not quick enough to deal with the resulting problems that it causes. Grokster is a case in point - it isn't even a very popular file sharing network anymore, people have moved on to new technologies already, ones that will not be covered in the Grokster decision because their facts for litigation purposes are substantially different than those the Grokster case presents. So while copyright owners may well score a big victory at the Supreme Court in the Grokster case, they are unlikely to achieve the ultimate goal of stopping file sharing- they'll only stop a certain type of file sharing. They'll have to go back to Congress.

Read more about Bit Torrent's legal situation here:
Yahoo! News - BitTorrent May Prove Too Good to Quash

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