Posted by FatKat on 10/10/05 21:32

Angrie.Woman wrote:
> George Hester wrote:
> > Who is they? Napster survived for a while and then it got shut down by
> > Court decree. It was a little harder in the other P2Ps but the RIAA was
> > succesful in covincing the devs it was in their interest to shut WinMX down.
> > No Court decree there.
>
>
> It was a court decision - that essentially said even if there is a
> legitimate use for file sharing software, the manufacturers of said
> software can be held liable if the users do illegal things with it.
>
Are you talking about the Grokster case? If so, I think you've missed
the point. The decision as I read it punishes the makers of file
sharing software that can be used legitimately when the industry (or
any other plaintiff) can show the active encouragement by the makers
that their software be used for sharing protected media. In their
ruling, the Court (I believe it was the US-SC) noted that Grokster came
with adware - underlining Grokster's motive to make their program as
popular as possible. Once the court established that Grokster had a
profit motive linked to its popularity, the court took the next step to
what it's most common use was - and unsurprisingly the use was for the
unlawful sharing of protected media.

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