Hollywood v p2p continued
p2pnet.net News:- There’s an interesting, and revealing, article in Britain’s Financial Times by Business Software Alliance (BSA) consultant Richard A. Epstein who thinks the answer in MGM v Grokster is shut down Grokster, and leave everyone else alone.
‘Grokster’ is presumably his collective term for the hundreds, if not thousands, of commercial and non-commercial p2p file sharing networks and clients that currently exist on the Net.
Epstein’s subject is Hollywood’s carefully orchestrated attempts to have a unanimous decision by a US court reversed.
In MGM v Grokster, entertainment industry owned enforcement organizations the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) wanted it writ large into US law that p2p companies can be held responsible if their customers use their p2p software to infringe copyrights.
The RIAA and MPAA lawyers suffered a blistering defeat at District Court, and again at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
But Hollywood, used to getting its own way, flatly refuses to take lawful decisions as a lawful answers.
So it’s appealing. Again. And this time around, the studios, record label cartel and software companies have rounded up all kinds of associated and disparate organizations in which they have vested, or other, interests to file amicus briefs to back them up.
March 29 has been set as the date for oral arguments when the major movie studios and Big Music cartel will once again try to force a decision in their favour. A final ruling is expected by the end of July 2005.
No doubt, if the entertainment industry loses for the third time, as it probably will, its well paid legions of lawyers will be tasked to ferret out reasons why that decision, too, was wrong.
In the meanwhile, “In 1984, the United States Court held in Sony Corporation v Universal City Studios (Betamax) that the owners of motion pictures could not sue the sellers of Betamax machines for contributory copyright infringement, just because their then-new equipment allowed ordinary users to record their copyrighted material,” writes Epstein in the FT.
“Betamax stressed that Sony’s equipment had an extensive variety of noninfringing uses, including the simple time-shifting of recorded events that left all advertisements in tact. The case was widely regarded as a backhanded victory for the short-sighted film industry that didn’t quite get that Betamax and the VCR would open up an entire new revenue stream – home videos – for the very industry that sought to shut down the new technology. Like the old player-piano cases, a gentle judicial hand facilitated a wider commercial market for copyrighted works.”
What’s Epstein’s bottom argument?
That Betamax’s reprieve is all too generous: “Grokster can’t raise even one whiff of the fair use defence that loomed so large in Betamax.”
He adds:
“First, there’s no class of nonobjecting owners of copyrighted material who don’t mind copying. Second, there is no advertisements [sic] that can be watched at a different time. And third, this time the content providers, moreover, are right to assume that this new technology won’t open up new revenue streams given that iTunes has already figured out how to tap this segment of the market.
“This immediate facilitator shouldn’t escape because there are some noninfringing uses; there always are. Rather, Grokster should be held liable for fuelling a huge explosion in illegal transfers, even if its originators have tried to distance themselves from the illegal swaps that take place daily. If Grokster has some legitimate use, then it can be reconfigured, perhaps with consultation with the content owners, in ways that allow for the legal sharing of data, a critical function that looms larger each passing day.
“Here’s our moral. In dealing with contributory infringement, we can’t expect the precision that is found in infringement suits directed against individual players. All that can be asked is that we try to minimise the sum of two errors, for over and underenforcement.
“In this case, I believe that shutting down Grokster, and leaving everyone else alone, marks the sensible first approximation to the correct solution.”
Something you think we should know about? tips[at]p2pnet.net
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See:-
shut down Grokster – Contributory infringement wars, Financial Times, January 27, 2005
disparate organizations – Hollywood vs p2p file sharing, p2pnet, January 26, 2005
January 27th, 2005 at 8:21 pm
“First, there’s no class of nonobjecting owners of copyrighted material who don’t mind copying. “…..
That’s right Mr Suit and Tie, the only media that even EXISTS is your corporate-made shit. Across the entire Fing planet, every last creative person, er um, I mean corporation, objects to their work being propagated by their fans. Gimme a break….
“If Grokster has some legitimate use, then it can be reconfigured, perhaps with consultation with the content owners, in ways that allow for the legal sharing of data, a critical function that looms larger each passing day.”
Yes, we must all bow down to the corporate interests, no matter the cost… Because without the gigantic media money machine that is hollywood having full domination of the consumer’s media choices, where would society be? Imagine the horror of not being able to watch Tony S blast some snitch’s brains all over the wall twice a week…. and being subject to all that ‘Liberal’ hippie crap that is the indie film scene… the survivors would envy the dead..
THIS ISN’T ABOUT THEIR COPYRIGHTS, PEOPLE! IT’S ABOUT CONTROL OVER CONSUMER CHOICES. And consumers having more choice is bad for people that run monopolies.
January 27th, 2005 at 10:55 pm
Of course they dont talk about the BBC releasing copyrighted news reports through p2p, or p2p congress, or any of the kazaa, grokster, and morpheus based p2p sales solutions proposed and rejected by the major cartels.
What’s sad is that washington has gone mad since 9/11, and I say that the supreme court’s mere grant of cert indicates theyre going to replace betamax with some other standard which will without any doubt place direct regulatory control over technology and the internet in the hands of these morally bankrupt monstrosities.
January 28th, 2005 at 3:38 am
>>theyre going to replace betamax with some other standard which will without any doubt place direct regulatory control over technology and the internet in the hands of these morally bankrupt monstrosities.
I think you hit the nail on the head there. These companies see the shift in technology, not as an enabler, but as a >disabler<… an opportunity for them to undo betamax and tighten restrictions on “their” material. In their world, people will pay for *all and any* use of their material, be it a movie you (sort-of) own or a re-run of seinfeld you recorded 3 months ago. The trusted computer platform combined with the millenium copyright act and future corporate driven technologies and laws will ensure that corporate rights (i.e. $$) take precidence over what is fair/best for society.
That said, something does need to be done about p2p and copyright infringement. Lets be honest, p2p is used 99% for distribution of copyright material. While many see it as a victimless crime, it does hurt and destroy many software companies, book authors, etc. Imagine if I wrote a good novel in pdf format. It’d be on the p2p in a week and I’d see $0 for months of hard work. What the solution is I’m not sure, but something needs to be done.
On a side note, I *highly* doubt it truly hurts the music or movie industry (see the above for the reason they want to shut it down).
January 28th, 2005 at 2:43 pm
I was in a pinch and needed to learn a computer language and learn it quickly. I downloaded a book on Python development and spent the day reading it. The book was well written and contained much useful information. A week later, I went to the local Barnes and Noble to buy the book. Of course, it was not in stock, so I got the company to order it. It came in about a week later. Had I not downloaded that book, the sale would have never been made.
As a side note, I do not like to pay a high price for a DVD rental just to watch a movie once, so I did not rent movies for a long time. Now that I hacked together a Linux DVD media centre, I rent movies all the time. I copy a movie and add it to my personal collection. Movie Max makes more money from me now than ever before.
I find that most people are willing to pay for what they use. I am. I do. I am just sick and tired of shelling out hard-earned cash for crap. I like to inspect an item before purchasing it. If the day comes that the Cartels fix it so that I cannot download, or copy something for my own personal use is the day that they no longer get a bit of business from me.
There are other choices out there, and the cartels had better wake up and see the light. I use and produce open source products, and I make a good living doing it. I know several closed source products that are just as good as my open source products, but which one do you think is less expensive and more appealing to the users? Right now my product is less than half the price of the close sourced product, but it is less appealing because I do not have a big name (Microsoft) backing my product. But thanks to p2p, word is getting out about my product, and this is deadly to the likes of Microsoft. Therefore, companies like Microsoft are trying to stifle p2p (and free competition), but hopefully free capitalism will prevail and the cartels will lose this battle. But if not, oh well. There are other disribution methods besides the Net and p2p (DVD in snailmail hand to hand, direct encrypted links, etc.), and I intend to use all of them if necessary.
January 28th, 2005 at 8:33 pm
I think you misunderstand the importance of Betamax.
The outcome of the Grokster case is not so much about the contribulatory negligence charge, nor is it about the use of Grokster’s FT client, but it’s about whether the technology should be tethered to an outdated industry.
The importance of the Betamax ruling is that it set a precedence which said that large companies could not restrict or prevent the development of new technologies.
New technology always hurts some industry – this has been the way since the industrial revolution – and restricting P2P growth and development is another example of old, out dated business models who are being hurt by new technology.