Court-Appointed Expert to Select File-Sharing Copyright Filter

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on October 29, 2007 - 10:21am.

Los Angeles - A federal judge last week ordered that a court-appointed expert be put in place to determine the best means for StreamCast Networks, operator of the Morpheus file-sharing service, to block unauthorized downloads on its network.

The Supreme Court found in 2005 that file-sharing software providers could be held liable for the copyright infringement of users on their networks (MGM v. Grokster).

StreamCast was among the defendants in that case, and a lower court judge was tasked with creating an injunction to prevent further infringement.

U.S. District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson said the expert will determine which of the currently available filtering technologies (e.g. artist/title names, file hashes and acoustic fingerprinting) or combination thereof should be implemented, and how the filtering requirement should be enforced.

The method arrived at then has the potential to become an important precedent to consider in other Internet-related copyright infringement lawsuits.

http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/10/judge-deciding-.html

http://tinyurl.com/3xhgzj (PDF of decision)