Copyright Holders Have BitTorrent In Their Sights

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

04 July 2005

Following last week's Supreme Court ruling on Grokster, which stated that the providers of the peer-to-peer service could be held liable for the copyright infringing activities of their customers, reports in the US media have suggested that file-sharing program, BitTorrent may be next in the firing line.

Writing on behalf of the Supreme Court majority last week, Justice David Souter announced that:

"We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement."

He went on to add: "The record is replete with evidence that from the moment Grokster and StreamCast began to distribute their free software...each one clearly voiced the objective that recipients use it to download copyrighted works and each took active steps to encourage infringement."

Speaking to Reuters late last week, Illinois associate law professor, Mark Schultz observed that:

"BitTorrent has a more realistic case for non-infringing users than Grokster or the others ever had. (Inventor of the program, Barm Cohen) didn't set out to trade Ammonium or Britney Spears. But we have to be realistic because we know it's used for massive filesharing."

Professor Schultz went on to suggest that the fact the Cohen has repeatedly counselled users not to infringe copyright may go in his favour, if he finds himself facing legal action similar to the Grokster case.

However, the Motion Picture Association of America is taking no chances, and in December 2004, launched a number of lawsuits against websites enabling BitTorrent downloads.

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