The Register reports that the US Congress is considering legislation to regulate/restrict the P2P networks. A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing began on Wednesday 28 September under the banner "Protecting Copyright and Innovation in a Post-Grokster World". The initial testimonies are available here and they make interesting reading. It doesn't look like there will be any legislative changes just yet, but the Committee will form a prominent forum for debating how IP law should adapt to changes in technology.
The Aussie Kazaa and the US Grokster rulings encourage us to speculate about what this will mean in the UK. Obviously, UK users will be affected if their favourite P2P service goes offline, but the British music industry has concentrated on targeting users and not the service providers (which are mostly based in the US). We are left to wonder how far the "inducement to infringe" and authorisation of infringing copying arguments would stand up in the English courts, and what our 17-year-old Amstrad judgment would mean for today's technologies. Amstrad was found not to be liable for authorising or inducing the copyright infringements of users of its twin-deck tape recorders. My guess is that the Kazaa judgment would prove quite persuasive.
As Thomas Greene points out, the P2P networks have already begun to respond to the Grokster ruling: Mashbox is trying to buy Grokster with the intention of turning it into a "legal" service; WinMX and eDonkey are suffering; Limewire is working on introducing copyright-protection measures. Faultline observes on the Register: "in the space of one week, many of the P2P filesharing networks are on the verge of exiting the business either to offer a legal version with paid downloads, or selling up or simply closing up shop".
As p2p dies off users will migrate to the new ip2p, which is just taking off.
Posted by: bz8 | October 01, 2005 at 06:10 PM
The public fights back here is the story of a lady suing the RIAA http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2005/10/oregon-riaa-victim-fights-back-sues.html
Posted by: Geoff | October 05, 2005 at 07:55 AM