MGM vs. Grokster: Who won?

Posted: Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:02 pm

As reported everywhere, the US supreme court ruled against Grokster and shot the case back to lower courts for trial. But is this a loss for P2P or the tech industry? Hardly. As a matter of fact, it favors the tech industry by reinforcing the Sony Betamax ruling that a technology developer cannot be held liable for what had potential substantial legal uses (the VCR), by clarifying that the developer will be liable only for making a technology with the intention that it will be used to infringe copyright, which includes marketing it as such. Whether Grokster/Streamcast had such intention remains to be decided in trial at lower courts, and the result will be inconsequential to P2P in general. BitTorrent, for example, would be legal under the Supreme Court ruling, as it is clear that Bram Cohen, its creator, had no intention to design BitTorrent for copyright infringement (quite the contrary). P2P will be legal as long as we intend it for legal uses, as it should be.

Further reading:
- EFF: Key Quotes from the MGM v. Grokster Supreme Court Decision
- Slyck: MGM vs. Grokster - An Outright Entertainment Industry Win?