Home › content

Tech Firms, Public Interest Groups File Amicus Brief in MGM v. Grokster

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on January 24, 2005 - 7:17am.
Washington -- A coalition of technology firms and public interest groups on Monday filed a "friend of the court" brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear an appeal next month in the recording industry's copyright infringement lawsuit against peer-to-peer file-sharing firms, MGM v. Grokster. Groups including The Digital Media Association (DiMA), which represents webcasters; the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), which lobbies on behalf of 380 tech firms; and public interest groups NetCoalition and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) urged the Supreme Court to reaffirm its 1984 "Sony Betamax" decision, which found that VCRs were not tools of piracy because of their "substantial non-infringing uses." The brief further suggests the Supreme Court remand the Grokster case back to the lower court, to determine if peer-to-peer firms' conduct construed "bad behavior" that would merit charges of contributory copyright infringement. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals earlier found, in a landmark decision, that file-sharing software providers are not liable for copyright infringement committed by individual file-swappers. "By affirming its 1984 Sony standard, the Court can remind lower courts of the legal distinctions that permit innovators to flourish and those whose conduct violates the law to be held liable," said DiMA executive director Jon Potter. "But the Ninth Circuit was confused about its ability to take an independent look at bad behavior by defendants engaged in knowingly, actively encouraging copyright infringement by the misuse of their technology," added ITAA president Harris Miller.
http://www.itaa.org/news/docs/grokster.pdf 
http://www.digmedia.org 
http://www.netcoalition.com 
http://www.cdt.com

tags: Law | MGM | Grokster | Tech Firms | Public Interest Groups | Amicus Brief |



Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.