This is going to be a very important case in the future of P2P and it deserves some discussion on LQ.o

What are your views?

Let the old case (Betamax anyone?) stand I say. It just doesn't make sense to punish software developers for things people do with their products.

The significance of this case is that Mark Cuban is supporting Grokster, and can fight the plaintiffs on equal standing. As a comment in a /. article said "...he's really good at winning."

I support Mark and sincerely appreciate his willingness to take this on. -- J.W.

I agree with J.W. a bit here, Mark Cuban makes it interesting.

The biggest issue here is that giant companies(RIAA, Disney, NFL, MPAA, etc) are trying to stiffle innovations on the basis that they are illegal and have illegal uses. This isnt the only case like this popping up.

What sucks is the technology that is available but you cannot have it becuase of various lawsuits like these. The one that get my goat is the DVR lawsuits by some of the afore mentioned against putting active firewire ports on the DVR boxes.

His blog is interesting also..a few months ago(maybe a year) he talked about issues surrounding moving media around(like taking a DVD on a usb stick on a plane with you) and pointed out that if more things were in formats like HD people wouldnt be able to use p2p apps because the files would be to large to make it practical to pirate a ton of them. Was an interesting perspective on the issue.

maybe computers should be made illegal, too. this type of lawsuit is really stupid. i hope big companies don´t get it through.

As an aside the one thing that aggravates me to no end is the fact that the big studios have *always* resisted any sort of new technology. Back when VCR's were first coming out, the industry's position was uniformly that "VCR's will kill the movies" and "Home recording will bankrupt us" yadda yadda yadda, and yet amazingly, VCR's had the completely opposite effect, namely, that it created an entirely new revenue stream for the studios to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Just look at the income generated by video rentals and sales, as well companies such as Blockbuster, Netflix, etc, etc.

I'm not suggesting that the studios just set up free torrents of their latest releases, but why not let people download a movie for say $2? My point is that if I pay $3 for a rental from the video store, only a slice of that $3 goes back to the studio, and while I admit I don't know how big that slice might be, I'm sure it's not two thirds. In other words, the movie studios could actually increase their profits by selling directly to the public for a price that brings in more money for them and completely eliminates the need for them to share profits with other parties, like video stores. Additionally, because the price is so low in the first place, you remove almost all incentive for people to seek out pirated copies - how many people really would waste their time trying to download a huge file of unknown quality and content, when they could get a guaranteed valid copy for a measly 2 bucks?

In any case, I hope Mr. Cuban prevails. -- J.W.