Supreme Court to Hear Landmark P2P Case Tuesday
The US Supreme Court will hear arguments in MGM v. Grokster Tuesday. The EFF has been having a countdown featuring devices that were made possible in the granddaddy of copyright infringement/ fair use cases, the Betamax case. The media companies lost the first two rounds over the last couple of years and seem more determined than ever to control and own end to end the technology we use for entertainment.
Billionare Mark Cuban is underwriting the Grokster defense and has a good post on his blog about the issues. This sums it up pretty nicely…
We are a digital company that is platform agnostic. Bits are bits. We dont care how they are distributed, just that they are. We want our content to get to the customer in the way the customer wants to receive it, when they want to receive it, at a price that is of value to them. Simple business.
Unless Grokster loses to MGM in front of the Supreme Court. If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only.
A ruling is expected by June.