Supreme court file-sharing verdicts--sites are liable

in the pre-decision publicity two months ago I read several quotes from entertainment industry honchos predicting this verdict would be a "silver bullet" in terms of eliminating illegal downloading from the face of the earth. dream on.

Xpost: yeah from my limited understanding BT has a much stronger case for legitimate use than grokster et al

seriously, though, does this overthrown betamax? they say 90% of the use on grokster is illegal and that's too much... where's the cutoff? what about programs that are only 70%? 50%? 20? zero tolerance? the legitimate uses of these services can be underminded by this... so vague!

Does this happen a lot? I remember a few guys at my school got busted for writing a search engine for our school network (used primarily for music and movies, of course), but nobody that was actually sharing files.

from AP report on nytimes:
"We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by the clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties," Justice David H. Souter wrote for the court.

Is it the end for SLSK and the like then?

apple is in no way encouraging you infringe on copyrights at all. in fact, the ipod's software actively encourages you to purchase music.

All those gun-manufacturers must be pissing themselves with laughter.

So like I say all the p2p client creators need to do is include plenty of warning messages on their software about not downloading or exchanging copyright material, include links to buy material (tho adverts could no doubt be blocked with relative ease so this would be a vain attempt to appease draconian fatcats) perhaps.

No, the case is remanded to the lower court for it to enter a judgment consistent with the Supreme Court's decision. Otherwise, the lower court would have the power to ignore the Supreme Court's decision, which it doesn't.

The Supreme Court's decision to 'deny cert' (i.e. not hear the appeal) is not an implicit acknowledgement of the lower court's decision on any given case. All it basically determines is that on a novel issue, the lower court's decision is the one currently determining the state of the law on that issue, until the Supreme Court decides to hear another case on the same issue and rule on it.
Its decision not to hear the case does not mean that it agrees with the state of the law as decided by the lower court.

my prediction, just based on a hunch, is that the SC will eventually rule that making gun-makers liable would be 'a step too far' somehow.

My thought exactly. What are the "substantial non-infringing uses" of a handgun?

The SC's ruling on filesharing and any stance it does or will have on the liability of gun manufacturers make for a tough comparison, even if the Court has clearly ruled on both issues. The Constitutional concerns which surround firearms and rights thereto aren't really present on the filesharing issue, and so I think it's pretty much an 'apples and oranges'-type situation.

I fully support liability for gun manufacturers, by the way, but that's an issue for another forum.

(yeah, I know the gig numbers are backwards, but "2-OG, 4-OG" just doesn't scan right)

I agree re: the irony. Even more importantly, the decision doesn't get at the real problem of the dysfunctionality of the music industry, and is also largely unenforceable, since new filesharing networks can crop up literally overnight, while a successful suit against a single network can take months or years. So long as users keep up with the creation of new networks, the decision changes nothing. And I'm not even going to go into Bittorrent...

hunting, self-defense, target-practise, skeet shooting, winter bi-athalon...

hunting, self-defense, target-practise, skeet shooting, winter bi-athalon...
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wartime/partytime