File sharing

9-0 Grokster defeat

America, the most litigious society on the planet, just became more so.

The supreme court handed down a unanimous ruling against Grokster and states that tech companies can be sued for intent. If someone creates a system that can infringe against copyrights the courts will decide if the creator intended to infringe copyrights when they created the system. Unfortunately this ruling is very unclear and vague, and thus opens the door to a whole wave of new lawsuits.

The worry about this case was that products like the iPod would be illegal under this ruling. Fortunately, I think its clear that Apple didn't create that iPod with that intent. However, the RIAA can now launch an expensive legal attack on anyone it doesn't like, simply by claiming that they intended to infringe copyrights. Defending against this can potentially be really expensive.

This gives the RIAA and MPAA new legal fodder to pursue tech companies that they don't like. And unless the tech companies have a huge battle chest to defend themselves, there will be little they can do. Looks like they have wiggled their way out of their dead-end.

At least the Sony Betamax doctrine remains unchanged and vicarious infringement was not addressed at all. We now have far less legal clarity than before this court case -- as usual, the only people to win in this case are the lawyers. I can't even begin to imagine the chilling effects for innovation in this country.

Why doesn't the US just roll over and give up? Asia is already out innovating the US and this will make it much easier for Asia to take all the valuable bits of american know-how that are left. Admittedly, this is not much, but america kicking itself when its down is the stupidest thing I've seen in a while.

Last year I had some hope for the supreme court after the sodomy laws were found unconstitutional. But after Eldred, Grokster and the mind boggling expansion of eminent domain rights, I've lost all hope.

Posted by Mayhem at June 27, 2005 02:55 PM