Grokster has formally responded to that landmark Supreme Court ruling against its P2P operations by taking its service offline and agreeing to a reported $50 million settlement with copyright owners.
As previously reported a million times before, the P2P company was defeated earlier this year when the long running MGM v Grokster case reached the US Supreme Court. Despite a defence that said the software firm merely made a legitimate P2P technology and could not be held responsible if others used it for non-legit purposes, the judges ruled the defendants had, in fact, profited by enabling their customers to illegally share copyright music and that, in their marketing activity, they had implied that such file sharing was acceptable.
It is not clear what the future now holds for Grokster. There have been reports that Mashboxx, who are developing a legal file sharing system, are interested in buying defeated P2P company - their founder, Wayne Rosso, is a former CEO of Grokster. For the time being the Grokster website is promising a legitimate P2P service at some point in the future called Grokster 3G.
For most P2P users the future of Grokster is irrelevant. The nature of P2P means people will be still able to use the software even if the company itself is not longer distributing it. More to the point, ever since MGM v Grokster P2P users have been jumping ship to rival services like Limewire, eDonkey and Bearshare. It remains to be seen if the precedent of the MGM case can be used to force those sites out of business too.