Posted by Don Del Grande on 11/03/06 03:08

Just a Friend wrote:

> Citizen Bob wrote:

>| Copyright ©2006 CNET Networks, Inc.
>|
>| http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-998363.html
>|
>| Judge: File-swapping tools are legal
>| By John Borland
>| Staff Writer, CNET News.com
>| Published: April 25, 2003, 12:46 PM PDT

>This judgment has been overruled by so many other court cases, the list is
>way too long...

The only one I can think of is the Supreme Court decision against
Grokster (MGM v. Grokster), but the court opinion made it clear that
the main reason the decision went against Grokster was because the
company actively promoted the product as for use in illegal downloads.
From the majority opionion (written by Souter): "Grokster and
StreamCast are not, however, merely passive recipients of information
about infringing use. 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."

On the other hand, Attorney General Reno v. ACLU, which overturned the
Communications Decency Act, said that there is such a thing as going
too far in controlling the Internet: "In [an earlier case], we
remarked that the speech restriction at issue there amounted to
'burn[ing] the house to roast the pig.' The CDA, casting a far darker
shadow over free speech, threatens to torch a large segment of the
Internet community." (And, of course, the grandaddy of "the right of
non-infringing uses", Sony v. Universal Studios et al., which made
VCRs legal despite the fact that they could be used to make copies of
TV shows.)

-- Don

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