The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider whether two Internet file-sharing services may be held responsible for their customers' online swapping of copyrighted songs and movies.
Justices will review a lower ruling in favor of Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., which came as a blow to recording companies and movie studios seeking to stop the illegal distribution of their works.
The file-sharing is "inflicting catastrophic, multibillion dollar harm on petitioners that cannot be redressed through lawsuits against the millions of direct infringers using those services," the appeal by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and other entertainment companies says.
Grokster and StreamCast, in their filings, disagree: "Once the software has been downloaded by users, (we) have no involvement in, nor ability to control, what it is used for."
Hey, the excuse worked for IBM and the counting machines they sold to the Nazis. An IBM guy says in the movie [http://thecorporation.tv|The Corporation] (or was it [http://fahrenheit911.com|Fahrenheit 911]?) that they couldn't be held responsible for what their customers did with their machines. IBM still hasn't faced war crimes charges but their have been a few [http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/7417.html|law suits].
ANYway, so BigGovernment is going to decide if BigBusiness can protect this mythical missing money by telling smaller businesses what they can and can't produce.
What's really sad is how obvious it is that both BigBusiness and BigGovernment are so clueless regarding technology and the future.
In the early 1900s, BigGovernment tried to stop Americans from drinking booze. They banned the sale of alcoholic beverages. Did that stop Americans from boozing it up? What about that drug war? have we won/lost that yet? Now it's file sharing. The digital genie is out of the virtual bottle, folks--wake up and smell reality.
I'm not saying filesharing is wrong or right--just that it's here and it's not going anywhere. So, BigBusiness had better start figuring out a way to make money off of it or how to make their product more attractive to consumers.
In my book, you can't blame P2Pers for doing what companies would do. Look at how BigBusiness deals with laws--if they are about to break one, they look at how much a fine for a conviction would be compared to the cost of following the law. Often, they break the law and get fined because breaking the law allows them to make more money in the long run. Sure, companies get fined, but does that stop them from breaking the law again? Of course not.
So why should P2Pers stop?
Odds are most of them won't get caught, so what's their incentive?
You see? So it's useless to bother with the law the same way it's useless for the law to bother with you.
On top of that, you greedy lying bastards, one of your main premises is that P2Pers steal hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue from you guys every year. You say that one guy from someplace on the east coast downloaded something like $3000 of music in a day.
"THAT'S THEFT!" you say, basing that declaration on the idea that he would have had to spend 3 grand to buy all that music otherwise.
Right, who spends $3000 on music ever? Do you really think he was all set to go buy $3000 worth of music from his local music store?
As any reasonable person can see, this myth of "millions of dollars lost to filesharing" is just that--a myth. You're just pissed off because someone stole your business model.
Hell, corporations have been granted the same rights as humans--how about giving humans the same rights as corporations?
By the way, I'm all for people making their money, but I do not believe in the extremes that BigBusiness believes it deserves.
[http://news.com.com/Probing+IBMs+Nazi+connection/2009-1082_3-269157.html|Read more about IBM and the Nazis].
[http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=2676811&nav=23iiU49K|Read more about the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the case against Grokster and StreamCast].
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