The US Supreme Court will today hold the landmark hearing of that MGM v. Grokster case, which is expected to be instrumental in setting the legal boundaries for copying files from the internet.
Today's hearing is part of an appeal by the group of 28 movie and record companies against last year's ruling by a federal judge that the Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks shouldn't be held responsible for the end use of software for copyright infringement, citing the famous 1984 Sony Betamax case, which ruled that the makers of the video recorder could not be held responsible for illegitimate use of its product.
Lawyers representing the entertainment companies claim that a company should indeed be liable for whatever the primary use of their product is, in this case the illegal sharing of music or movies, and that 'Grokster and StreamCast cannot escape the reality that copyright infringement is their business.' Their other main argument posits that the companies involved are promoting the piracy, in their advertising and in the features they choose to build into, or leave out of their P2P software. The accused companies will argue that they offer a decentralised network and are therefore blind to users' activities.
**Mark
Cuban**, billionaire entrepreneur and president of HDNet, recently said he would finance Grokster's defence. 'If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only,' he wrote.
**Mitch
Bainwol, of the Recording Industry Association of America**, not surprisingly, given their long campaign against illegal downloading, rejects the suggestion that technological innovation is being stifled, saying: 'The Groksters of the world are not innovators.
Far from it. They are parasites who hide behind technology as they steal from the artists that create entertainment.'