Supreme Court Prepares To Hear Peer-To-Peer Copyright Case
The US Supreme Court announced last Friday that it will hear a movie industry
appeal over a lower court's peer-to-peer file-sharing ruling early next year. Supporting an initial ruling delivered in April 2003, the 9th US Circuit Court
of Appeals announced in August that file sharing firms such as Grokster, Kazaa
and Morpheus cannot be held responsible for the use to which their services
are put, so long as they are not directly able to stop the copyright infringing
acts in question. Taking up the gauntlet on behalf of the industry, MGM Studios has filed
a petition with the Supreme Court, asking it to reverse the 9th Circuit Court's
verdict. The group is arguing that despite the decentralised structure adopted by the
file-sharing firms, and the fact that some of the file-sharing activity taking
place on their networks is legitimate, the copyright infringing activities of
some users would not be possible without the software that they have made available. It is anticipated that the case will be heard in March. .
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