[NEWS] - P2P softwares judged legal.

[CougTek]

There might be at least one judge on this planet with something grossly similar to intelligence afterall.

In an almost complete reversal of previous victories for the record labels and movie studios, federal court Judge Stephen Wilson ruled that Streamcast--parent of the Morpheus software--and Grokster were not liable for copyright infringements that took place using their software. The ruling does not directly affect Kazaa, software distributed by Sharman Networks, which has also been targeted by the entertainment industry.

"Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends," Wilson wrote in his opinion, released Friday. "Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."

Let's hope the verdict will hold in later lawsuits.

Full story.

 

[zx]

It's about time that the record industry stops trying to control piracy. They can file a lawsuit against any p2p network they want, others will appear. It's the sad truth but they have to accept it.

How about trying to adapt to the new situation? Yes such thing is hard, and their profits may never be the same, but they can't just file lawsuits after lawsuit to try to reduce piracy, it won't work. People will find other ways (ever heard of direct connect?).

On a brighter side, p2p must be one of the best things to happen to the hardware industry. People are buying more hardware because of that. So even though word/windows/ie (office apps) could run very well on 5 year old computers, the average joe has found a new reasons to upgrade.

"Le bonheur des uns fais le meilleur des autres" like we say .

 

[blakerwry]

It's about time that the record industry stops trying to control piracy. They can file a lawsuit against any p2p network they want, others will appear. It's the sad truth but they have to accept it.

How about trying to adapt to the new situation? Yes such thing is hard, and their profits may never be the same, but they can't just file lawsuits after lawsuit to try to reduce piracy, it won't work. People will find other ways (ever heard of direct connect?).

On a brighter side, p2p must be one of the best things to happen to the hardware industry. People are buying more hardware because of that. So even though word/windows/ie (office apps) could run very well on 5 year old computers, the average joe has found a new reasons to upgrade.

"Le bonheur des uns fais le meilleur des autres" like we say .

I think what they were more trying to do was set precidents so that they wouldn't have to keep filing painfull lawsuit after lawsuit. Once the precidents are set it's easy to stop the piracy p2p programs from popping up.


I personally don't find anything wrong with software that uses the p2p strategy... windows shares for example... ICQ.... but I do think I can find faults with the programs like morpheus, kazaa, etc. These programs encourage piracy. I like the distributed nature of the software, it's truely a good invention, however I look down upon the current uses.

Because of these type of copyright infringements companies are going to push harder for DRM. And I can easily see DRM as a "big businesses revenge tool".