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charge, nor is it about the use of Grokster’s FT client, but it’s about whether the technology should be tethered to an outdated industry.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.

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.

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).

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.

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.