Bringing content owners to their knees
p2pnet news | Music:- Wired has an interesting perspective on the latest instalmentof the infamous Grokster ruling.
It describes a new way for Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG, the members of the Big 4 organised music cartel, to throw their weight around.
p2pnet posted last week, “StreamCast has been ordered to virtually halt all activities, including advertising, until it’s been able to implement a DRM system which guarantees copyrighted corporate product won’t be infringed by application users.”
StreamCast owner of Morpheus, one of the tiny handful of surviving independent P2P file sharing applications, has been battling the multi-billion-dollar corporate music industry as it tries to take over anything and everything to do with online music distribution.
“In discussing the scope of the filter, the court quickly dismisses any requirement that it be ‘perfec’ as that would effectively shut down StreamCast and ban distribution of the Morpheus software. Instead, the court required StreamCast ‘to reduce Morpheus’s infringing capabilities, while preserving its core noninfringing functionality, as effectively as possible’,” noted EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) lawyer Jason Schultz on his personal LawGeek blog, going on:
This boils down to two things:
1. Installing a filter as part of future Morpheus software distributed to the public; and
2. Taking steps to encourage legacy users of the old Morpheus software to upgrade to the new filtered versions.
Says Wired:
… the judge told his expert to disregard the cost of implementing the system (unless “the difference in effectiveness is minimal and the discrepency in cost is substantial”).
It’s possible that they [sic] way the movie and music industries will attempt to bring user content networks to their knees in the future will be to make them implement a prohibitively-expensive, court-ordered solution.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
p2pnet – Court again rules against Morpheus, October 18, 2007
LawGeek – Permanent Injunction in MGM v. Grokster, Pt. 2, October 16, 2007
Wired – Judge Deciding How P2P Networks (and Probably YouTube) Will Filter Out Copyrighted Files, October 26, 2007
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October 29th, 2007 at 9:35 am
What a waste of time and money. Every time the labels do a victory dance over p2p court victories either something new comes up, or people just ignore it and keep on downloading anyway.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:55 am
I am downloading and sharing right now to bother these parasites.
Also I am religiously avoiding giving any moneyto any RIAA or MPAA members. Not even a peny! Sorry!
October 29th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
“2. Taking steps to encourage legacy users of the old Morpheus software to upgrade to the new filtered versions.”
Which they certainly won’t, unless they’ve been living under a rock for the last year. They’re not stupid, and they’re not going to fall for that kind of scam.
Gnutella-based P2P programs are nearly extinct anyway. More and more people are turning away from them because of security risks, and all the spam they get with their search results. Instead, more people are using BitTorrent, eMule and DC. And since these programs are:
1) Open-Source
2) Widely Distributed
3) Independently operated through trackers, hubs, etc.
They ain’t goin’ nowhere. Even if the cartels managed to sue them out of existence (including all the BT/eMule sites and trackers and DC hubs) more of them would just pop right up in a matter of hours.
The cartels are fighting a losing battle. Embrace the technology or die.