p2pnet.net News:- Will the entertainment cartels fail for the third time in their attempts to muscle a US court into ruling against p2p and innovation not controlled by, Yup, the entertainment cartels?

We believe they will. We believe the US Supreme Court will next Monday, or perhaps the Monday after, will rule for p2p and innovation, and against the movie studio, record label and software cartels, in Grokster v MGM.

Twice before Hollywood has used its immense political, financial and media clout to try to beat panels of judges into ruling the owners of p2p applications such as Streamcast’s Morpheus should be held liable for what users do with the software.

They failed both times. But never ones to take a clear legal decision as binding, the cartel owners are hoping the supreme court will in effect nullify earlier rulings which didn’t accord with their business plans.

But it seems the movie studios, at least, have virtually accepted defeat and are paving the way for their next efforts to hammer p2p and file sharing into the dust, using congress as the club.

Cartel mouthpiece Dan Glickman, who runs its MPAA (Motion Picture Assocation of America), used a “friendly” luncheon audience to, “rehearse his likely pitch to Congress should the studios lose the Grokster case,” says Video Business.

“We still hope to win an unqualified victory,” he said. “If we can’t have that, I want to win a qualified victory. But regardless of what the court does, we will keep doing what we’re doing in terms of legislation, litigation and education.”

The story also has him saying, “Shall we keep in place legal protections that promote the free market, or shall we tear down those protections in such a way as to allow the black market to prosper and dominate?

“If we have learned anything over the past 50 years with the collapse of communism and the triumph of free-market capitalism, we have learned that abusing private property rights actually leads to less creativity, less technological development and less freedom.”

What we’ve learned is: the triumph of corporations owned by the likes of the studios leads to almost zero creativity that isn’t tied directly to a bottom line; a dramatic slow-down in technological development; and, the creation of a ‘consumer’ class lovingly trained to swallow whatever they’re given, and like it.

“The themes seemed crafted to appeal to the Republican majority on Capitol Hill, which would hold the fate of Hollywood’s future anti-piracy efforts in its hands should the Supreme Court rule against the studios in Grokster,” says Video Business, adding that if the ruling go against them, “the studios are expected to hit Capitol Hill seeking Congressional action to rein in peer-to-peer file trading.

Glickman noted that both he and ex-US president Ronald Reagan are products of Hollywood.

“He was an actor, and became president. I was a congressman who became president of the Motion Picture Association,” Glickman boasted, according to Video Business.

Stay tuned.

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See:-
Video Business - GLICKMAN PRESSES ‘PROTECTIONS’, June 14, 2005

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 at 2:51 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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