A few comments on the Grokster case.
Since the Supreme Court did not rule the software as such (where have I heard that phrase again) illegal, it should be a simple exercise to circumvent the decision. Should not take more than three steps.
One: Found new company named Trikster. Two: Transfer all Grokster assets to the new company. Three: Start over with the marketing of the software, carefully observing all limits on legal marketing given in the Supreme Court decision.
Then, on the other hand, since it is illegal now to have a name ending in "ster", maybe some other name like Trikter or Trikser would be more appropriate. I am sure the Grokster management can figure that question out easily with the help of a few high-paid lawyers.
And if all these strategies don't work, consumers are still free to distribute the software as such, as long as they don't advertise any intent to violate copyright while doing so.
The other point I wanted to make has already been explained by Siva Vaidhyanathan. See this BoingBoing post for a link to his article, which is behind a Salon commercial.
Basically Vaidhyanathan seems to attack the Supreme Court for shutting down Google with their decision.
While I heartily agree with his opinion that Google might be illegal from today on, I don't see any problem with that.
Vaidhyanathan writes "we all dig Google". Well, I for one certainly don't.
So if Google can't survive Grokster, I think that is just great. Google has been getting a free pass on their wholesale violation of copyright much too long.
And when talking about the limits for building P2P software after Grokster, at the very least one should agree that P2P is mostly about search and only marginally about sharing files. You can share files with e-mail and FTP, both around since over 30 years. Finding the files is the tricky and the new part.
So for the very least, search engines will need to take a close look at the Grokster decision and if their marketing strategies are compatible.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at June 28, 2005 10:43 PM