Consequences of Supreme Court's decision on peer-to-peer

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: STEVE TAYLOR AND LARRY HETTICK ON
CONVERGENCE
07/04/05
Today's focus: Consequences of Supreme Court's decision on
peer-to-peer

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Analysis of decision on MGM vs. Grokster and StreamCast
* Links related to Convergence
* Featured reader resource

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Today's focus: Consequences of Supreme Court's decision on
peer-to-peer

By Steve Taylor and Larry Hettick

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down two decisions that
we believe will clear up some questions on how converged
services are offered but will open the door to other questions.
Today, we'll highlight the case of MGM vs. Grokster and
StreamCast.

MGM had sued Grokster and StreamCast for copyright violation
because the defendants offered content distribution (including
content copyrighted by MGM) using peer-to-peer software.
Grokster maintained that it was merely a distributor of
information, and a lower court had sided with Grokster. The
lower court reasoned that the peer-to-peer software used by the
distribution companies was similar to a home video recorder or
copy machine, so any copyright violation was the liability of
the users and not the liability of the software manufacturer.

The Supreme Court disagreed, and in ruling for MGM found that
Grokster and StreamCast were aware of the violations and even
encouraged their users to violate the copyright law. The court
did not, however, overturn a previous ruling that permits
copying content or distributing content. Rather, the court
focused on the intent of software manufacturers.

So while the ruling may force companies to assure they don't
encourage illegal copyright violations by copying and
distributing content, it does not stop either practice
altogether.

This case is important to applications convergence for two
reasons. First, it doesn't ban the practice of sharing content
across a peer-to-peer environment - so the peer-to-peer model
still has the potential to be very disruptive to content
providers who want to charge for content distribution. And
second, it seems clear that the court has not abandoned the need
to protect intellectual property and copyrighted materials - so
innovation in creating content is still going to be a profitable
business.

Next time, we'll take a look at the Supreme Court ruling on
information services access across cable television networks.
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To contact: Steve Taylor and Larry Hettick

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates
and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. For more detailed
information on most of the topics discussed in this newsletter,
connect to Webtorials <http://www.webtorials.com/>, the premier
site for Web-based educational presentations, white papers, and
market research. Taylor can be reached at
<mailto:taylor@webtorials.com>

Larry Hettick an industry veteran with over 20 years of
experience in voice and data. He is currently Vice President
for Wireline Solutions at Current Analysis, the leading
competitive response solutions company. He can be reached at
<mailto:larry@larryhettick.com>
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Ciena
NetworkWorld Special Report - The Adaptive WAN: The factors
driving WAN evolution

A combination of business and technology trends are changing the
demands on the enterprise WAN. This NetworkWorld Special Report
explores some of the key business and technology trends that are
driving and enabling the evolution of the enterprise WAN and how
the enterprise WAN can become adaptive to support these trends.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=107739
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ARCHIVE LINKS

Archives of the Convergence newsletter:
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FEATURED READER RESOURCE
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touted - find out if attendees agreed and if faster storage
solutions will soon be available. Click here:
<http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/062005-data-recovery.html>
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