Grokster Loses in US Supreme Court Ruling

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of MGM in the long running MGM v. Grokster case. The decision is grounded in the idea that if a technology is created with the primary intent to induce customers to infringe on copyright the creator of the technology is held liable for the creation. While I'm no lawyer, so I don't pretend to comprehend the full extent this decision will have on technology innovation, I see it as a major step backward. This decision positions copyright as a potential corporate weapon, rather than a protector of creative rights. Now if a rights holder sees any potential threat from a technology, there's a legal precedent to point at. Was it the intent of a CD burner manufacturer to create a tool for producing illegal copies of CDs? Or was it their intent to make it easy for consumers to back up their data or make a shiny disk version of the ages old 'mix tape'? These aren't questions that will be answered overnight and in the case of CD burners, maybe the question will never come up, but many technologies we take for granted are now opened up to close examination for the intent to encourage copyright infringement. Let's hope we aren't headed into a technology regression as a result. For more on the ruling, visit the EFF archives.

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