Grokster Decision
Before I begin, I will say that I haven’t read the decision (too boring) and I am not a lawyer (too hard). Nonetheless, here is What I Think About This:
With a strange little sidestepping head fake, the supreme court has today ruled that makers of P2P software may be held liable for their users’ copyright infringement activities if the software was created with the intent of inducing users to infringe. Yipes. I think everyone expected them to uphold the old Sony Betamax decision that technology that had some infringing uses was OK as long as it had substantial non-infringing uses, and in fact the lower courts had used this as a precendent to rule in favor of Grokster and pals. But they pirouetted neatly around it by saying that it’s not about the technology, it’s about the intent and the business model and the marketing.
I’m kind of torn about this decision. While I do think it’s maybe not so good for a company to promote their software as a means to obtain free copyrighted material, this decision clearly makes it much scarier to make P2P software, even if you have completely non-infringing uses in mind. It’s just one more way you can get sued when you create innovative technology, and that’s probably bad for everyone. A decent, but certainly biased summary of this case can be read here at EFF.org.
Legal P2P
Well, kind of. From the AP via Slashdot, this article about the emergence of authorized P2P sites. PeerImpact is one that’s already in beta – it’s sort of the bastard child of the iTunes store and say, Limewire. You’re still buying songs and the money still goes to the store, and you’re still limited in how you use the songs you buy (cursed DRM!), but now you’re getting the files from other users in the network. It’s file sharing without the “sharing” part. File buying maybe, which doesn’t really sound as sexy. PeerImpact has the added wrinkle that you actually earn Chuck E. Cheese Bucks (or whatever) every time someone gets a song from you, and you can use these Chuck E. Cheese Bucks to buy music for yourself. Now everybody can be in marketing.
We’ll see if people go for it. I personally would guess that there’s not enough new stuff here to significantly divert people from other established online music stores. Who cares where the file comes from? You’re still just buying WMA files that won’t play on your iPod (whoops). But it does show that the RIAA understands that P2P is here to stay, and that it recognizes that there’s a financial benefit to allowing users to share content with each other. Turns out these RIAA people are actually quite reasonable when they’re not suing 13-year-olds and dog-food-eating grandmas with broken hips.
One More Score
Hey, that was fast. Here’s an mp3 of our live performance from Little Gray Books Lecture #31: How to Commit the Perfect Crime. Music by me, lyrics by me and Adam Stein. In a related story, I have decided that I can no longer stand to listen to live recordings of me singing or playing the guitar.
Did I mention the teddy bear was filled with diamonds?
Blottered!
The Little Gray Books show went fine, thanks for asking. I’m hoping to get an mp3 of the former-partners-in-crime love song duet that happened posted soon. There was some lovely schtick with a teddy bear stuffed with diamonds in the middle, long story. For those who like a good read and some photos to go along with it, check out the coverage here on the Blottered.
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