Grokster v. MGM Affirmed

In San Francisco the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed the Grokster v. MGM case. Judge S.R. Thomas wrote the opinion of MGM v. Grokster:

This appeal presents the question of whether distributors of peer-to-peer file-sharing computer networking software may be held contributorily or vicariously liable for copyright infringements by users. Under the circumstances presented by this case, we conclude that the defendants are not liable for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement and affirm the district court’s partial grant of summary judgment.

The Court upholds the famous Betamax standard of Sony v. Universal under which a claim of contributory copyright infringement is defeated if a technology is “capable of substantial” or “commercially significant noninfringing uses”:

In this case, the Software Distributors have not only shown that their products are capable of substantial noninfringing uses, but that the uses have commercial viability.

The Court decision can be found here.

- - -

There is an ever growing feast of links at The Importance Of...