It looks like the Supreme Court took a look at innovation and the Copyright Cartel’s profits and decided which was more important: the Copyright Cartel.
This is an incredibly short sighted decision that will damage, primarily, US technology and innovation. There is the concern, of course, that what goes in the US eventually filters into Europe. I wonder whether the equivalent UK case, Sony v Amstrad, will be similarly qualified at some point either by legislation or a Copyright Cartel promoted lawsuit.
I will qualify this by saying I have not read the judgment yet, I don’t believe that it has been published, and perhaps I’m being a tad premature but the gist seems to be that if you produce a product with the intent of inciting copyright infringement you will be liable. That may not sound too bad but I fear that it presents the Copyright Cartel with a baseball bat that they can wield effectively. In the past they have been hampered by Betamax and the cases dual use element. This decision may shift the balance of power further in their direction.
I reckon that the Copyright Cartel will now go to device manufacturers and p2p authors and say “you are inciting infringement, under Grokster we will win against youâ€Â. The message will not be lost: install approved DRM or be litigated to death. Most will give in.
Hopefully this will shift more technological innovation out of America.
I’ll post more when I’ve analysed the judgement.
Update 28th June: From what the Register are saying I was right to put a caveat on this: the SC may just have done nothing much. Sony has been upheld per se, but the breadth of interpretation of Sony may has been confined and the intent and behaviour of the manufacturer/coder is the more relevant factor.
memo to self: find read think talk, in that order please.
Update 5th July
Brief commentary here;
mgm v grokster
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