File sharing

P2P update

Last week the the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Medical Library Association and the Special Libraries Association filed an amicus brief on behalf of Grokster and Streamcast Networks:

A central argument of the brief is that the district court got it right when applying a 1984 Supreme Court decision to the Internet. That decision, Sony v. Universal City, said Sony could continue to manufacture its Betamax VCR because a company "cannot be a contributory (copyright) infringer if, as is true in this case, it has had no direct involvement with any infringing activity."

...

The ACLU said Thursday that the brief argues that peer-to-peer networks are speech-promoting technologies that have many noninfringing uses. If the MPAA and the RIAA succeed in shutting down peer-to-peer networks or making them more centralized, the precedent could create undesirable choke points that could be used to monitor Internet users, the ACLU said.

Having the librarians on the side of the P2P guys should complicate matters for the RIAA and MPAA. I wonder if there is come connection to Cory's analogy of P2P users building the largest library in the world and the RIAA wanting to tear it down?

And RollingStone claims that despite lawsuits, traffic on file-sharing sites is booming. I'm still seeing more articles claiming little to no change in P2P traffic since the Sue the World campaign started.

Posted by Mayhem at September 27, 2003 11:03 AM