Three years after it effectively shut down Napster for music piracy, a federal appeals court Thursday blessed a new generation of online file-sharing networks and scolded the entertainment industry for trying to stretch copyright law to thwart innovation.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was a defeat for major record labels and Hollywood studios, which fear that runaway online piracy of songs and movies could destroy their businesses.
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The battle over file sharing is now likely to shift to Washington. Congress is considering a bill that would crack down on the companies making the software used by millions to copy music, movies and games over the Internet.
What's more, if the entertainment industry appeals the decision, the U.S. Supreme Court could revisit its landmark Sony Betamax ruling, which protects from copyright lawsuits products that have substantial legitimate uses. The 9th Circuit panel relied on that 1984 ruling in unanimously affirming a lower-court decision issued last year that the companies behind the Grokster and Morpheus networks don't violate copyright law, even though many of the people who use the networks do.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-grokster20aug20,1,873879.story?coll=la-home-businessThe RIAA should really get a clue on this issue- rather than go after file sharers, a better use of their muscle would be to urge Congress (or a Kerry FCC & FTC) to break up radio conglomerates like Entercom & Clear Channel that buy up all the stations in markets all over the country and program them with generic formats. These days, new artists and those out of favor due to disputes over say- abusive ticketing practices can't get any airtime. Someone like Beck would
never have a chance of being discovered- except maybe through payola.
How does the RIAA expect to sell CD's when its artists can't get airplay? Since no one gets to hear the singles, why does the RIAA think people are going to run out and buy the album?
Personally, if it weren't for Limewire, I wouldn't have made half of my CD purchases over the past several years. Seems to me that the meager amount of sales that they lose to file sharers is more than made up for by the buzz created by word of mouth- especially considering the varying and always poorer quality of MP3's.
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