The Grokster an illegal service; the landmark ruling merely voided a lower-court summary judgment in Grokster's
favor and sent the case back to that court—albeit with a recommendation that Grokster be held accuntable for inducement
to infringe. Grokster isn't bothering to fight the matter further, though. This message now appears on the
Grokster home page:
"The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is
illegal. Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is
prosecuted by copyright owners.
There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.
Grokster hopes to have a safe and legal service available soon."
Something called Grokster 3G will presumably offer some sort of P2P
experience with licensed content.
Grokster: Gone
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. The Grokster/Napster 1.0 model has collapsed here. Not P2P trading. What this ruling hurts are American companies like Grokster who try to make money off of P2P trading. But, if P2P trading isn't being spearheaded by a business, or if it's being done outside of the US, I don't see that form of P2P trading dissolving. Mutating, yes. Disappearing, no.
3. P2P networks will only continue to go further underground. I think the time of open source p2p applications is coming. Instead of corporations coming out with p2p apps, it will be groups of people, making hard to detect and impossible to trace programs. As hard as the RIAA may try to stop open file sharing, they will only succede at making it harder to stop.
Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Jason
1. Thats what the RIAA should have done from the beginning instead of picking the pockets of everyday, hardworking people where presumably they would believe on-line p2p businesses were legal but then having to pay in lawsuits. I have to give Grokster credit for putting that statement on their site and we will soon see many more p2p sites dissolve or implode.
Posted at 4:30AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Bert Gagnon