The case turns on the interpretation of a 1980s Supreme Court
decision on Sony's Betamax video recorder which, at the time, had
been accused of infringing
TV
and movie studios'
copyrights. Sony won that case because the machine had significant
non-infringing uses.
In an intensive hour-long hearing, the Supreme Court Justices
tried to establish whether a ruling in favour of the industry,
overturning Betamax, would chill invention, with developers too
fearful of potential copyright actions to innovate.
But according to reports, the Court was also concerned that
P2P companies were
profiting from the illegal distribution of copyrighted material,
inadvertently or not. The Justices questioned whether there was any
way of establishing whether the companies had "induced" illegal
file-sharing.
A decision is not expected until June, but commentators
suggest that the Supreme Court will uphold the earlier rulings, and
leave it to Congress to legislate on the issue.
The suit relates to a copyright infringement action brought by
the entertainment industry against two file-sharing service
providers – Streamcast Networks Inc., the company behind the
Morpheus file-sharing software, and Grokster
Ltd
.
The suit accused the two firms of providing the means whereby
countless numbers of file-swappers illegally copy and share
copyrighted music, software and films over the internet. But the
claim was dismissed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last
August on the grounds that, while the companies provide the
software used by file-sharers to swap illegally copied digital
files, the software can also be used for legitimate purposes.
The Appeals Court was also hesitant to extend the scope of
copyright law to cope with developing new technologies, as the
entertainment industry was urging.
Intel, which is not a party to the case, filed a brief with
the court in support of the Betamax ruling, arguing that, while it
wants its own intellectual property to be protected in law,
technology companies must not be held responsible for what
consumers do with their products.
Other parties have pointed to Apple's iPod as a good example
of a new technology that can be used for both legitimate and
illegitimate purposes. But the music industry will attempt to draw
a distinction between successes like the iPod and the
P2P
networks, because they argue that the business
model of the latter is premised on infringement.
