p2pnet.net News:- Attempts by the Big Four record labels and the major movie studios to scupper what they call online file sharing pirates sank, last week, when the US Court of Appeals for the 9th circuit ruled unanimously that p2p applications don’t break US copyrights.

Commercial p2p operators BearShare, Blubster, eDonkey , Grokster and Morpheus say they’ve been vindicated by the decision.

But, “For those of us who despise the file-swappers as larcenous hypocrites, it’s not a happy verdict,” laments Boston Globe columnist Hiawatha Bray here.

In April, Bray railed against Canadian justice Konrad von Finckenstein’s decision on file sharing. In what turned out to be the first of a series of disasters for the Big Four in Canada, Von Finckenstein turned down the music cartel’s demands for an order to force five Canadian ISPs to reveal the identities of 29 of their clients in what Bray described as a “ridiculous” ruling.

Now, says Bray, “Three judges on a federal appeals court in California made it official last week: The traditional recorded music business is doomed.

“Yes, there’s still the US Supreme Court, one last way station on the road to the abyss. But it’s unlikely that those nine justices will undo the work of their West Coast colleagues.

“Last week’s ruling in the Grokster case was lucid, logical, and unanimous. Peer-to-peer file-sharing programs like Grokster, Kazaa, LimeWire, and all the rest, used by millions worldwide to exchange pirated copies of music and movies, do not violate federal copyright law. The users of these programs may face prosecution for swiping the files. But the makers of the software are in the clear.”

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah must have seen this coming, says Bray, going on:

“Hatch went out on a limb a few months back, proposing a federal law that would ban products that sought to “induce” copyright violations. In this space, I defended Hatch against the scorn of outraged technologists, who insisted the new law would have stifled the invention of the Apple iPod and other tech goodies.”

Bray is no doubt referring to the Hollywood / Hatch INDUCE Act, custom-design to kill p2p that’s not owned and/or controlled by the labels and studios.

But, says Bray, “I changed my mind when Marybeth Peters, the chief of the US Copyright Office, praised the Hatch bill because it would undermine the Betamax case. If that happened, the next generation of digital marvels would be buried in an avalanche of injunctions, depositions, and discovery motions. No thanks, Marybeth. We’d rather learn to live with digital thievery.”

He’s not alone in that opinion.

However, there’s a possible remedy to the Mopheus / Grokster ruling, concludes Bray, and it comes from the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) that “plotted the file-swappers’ victorious legal strategy”.

He’s talking about Voluntary Collective Licensing of Music File Sharing, described in the EFF’s Let the Music Play White Paper. “a plan that gives artists and producers a hope of collecting at least some money for their work”.

Irony at its tastiest.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 23rd, 2004 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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