p2pnet.net News View:- There are hundreds of headlines on Google News, today, centering on the US Supreme Court Grokster v MGM hearing.

At issue is whether file-sharing services offered by companies such as Grokster and StreamCast Networks Inc. violate federal copyright laws, says MarketWatch

“The U.S. Supreme Court, hearing arguments today on Internet file-sharing networks, probed for a way of encouraging new technology while protecting owners of copyrighted movies and songs that network users share for free,” says Bloomberg News.

“Supreme Court justices questioned on Tuesday whether the recording industry’s attempts to shut down online file-sharing networks would deter inventors from developing new products like Apple’s iPod music player,” says Reuters.

“The Supreme Court expressed concerns Tuesday over allowing entertainment companies to sue makers of software that allows Internet users to illegally download music and movies, questioning whether the threat of such legal action might stifle Web innovation,” says the Detroit Free Press.

But Canada’s Globe & Mail is among the few mainstream media outlets to get it right. Its Mathew Ingram says:

“The major record labels and movie studios would like you to think of the MGM vs. Grokster case – which the U.S. Supreme Court started hearing today – as a battle between the forces of truth and righteousness and the lawless hordes of computer pirates who are plundering the vaults of the world’s music and movie industries.

“In reality, however, it is about who should be able to control a new technology, and who should be responsible for the ways in which a new technology is used. That’s why the key precedent in the MGM vs. Grokster case is the 1984 Betamax decision, which struck down the movie industry’s attempts to restrict the then-new videocassette recording technology that Sony Corp. had introduced.”

And indeed, control is what it’s all about.

Groster v MGM is a key element in the entertainment and software industries’ carefully orchestrated plan to gain complete control over ‘consumers,’ as we’re contemptuously known.

Other components include the:

• International law suits launched by the likes of the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) on behalf of their owners, the major record label and movie studio cartels
• Broadcast Flag, which would remotely control data flow in and out of consumer homes
• Passing of laws such as INDUCE and the many other `legal` controls sponsored by the cartels
• Use of tax-payer funded teaching institutions as sales, marketing and PR outlets with administrators as unpaid staff
• Use of publicly funded national and local police forces as industry enforcers, with all that implies in terms of drains on already scarce manpower and resources
• General rule that it`s OK for the cartels to routinely give financial support [read bribes] to politicians willing to carry their plans, interests and messages forward
• Control of significant numbers of international print and electronic news media outlets

The list goes on.

But for the first time in history, the corporate community is losing control of the `consumers` who keep it fat and happy.

Thanks to the Net, more and more of us are starting to choose, rather than mindlessly accept what’s dictated by the cartels.

We now freely communicate with each other, by-passing the mainstream news and marketing systems which until now have been our sole sources of information.

It’s called blogging. It’s called citizen journalism. It’’s called true freedom of speech.

And with more and more people going online every day, to use a thoroughly hackneyed phrase, a new consumer age is dawning and Grokster v MGM represents little more than another struggling, desperate breath from a dying dinosaur.

And in the meanwhile Leo, the MGM lion, doesn’t exist any more.

He’s long dead and buried on a farm in New jersey.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2005 at 3:28 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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