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MPAA decides they know more than the Supreme Court
Check this article: Sue Google, Not Us, Torrentspy tells Hollywood (spotted on PCWelt)
In a legal reply to the MPAA, TorrentSpy claims a person can find more torrents through Google than you can through a torrent portal. The argunment goes on to say that since TorrentSpy doesn’t have any copyrighted work on their site, they cannot be held responsible for what people do after they leave their site.
The basis of lawsuits like this is MGM vs. Grokster. In that case it was decided by the Supreme Court that Grokster actively provided tools and promotion for pirating. Of course, the Supreme Court also ruled in that case that the act of file sharing, or using P2P software is *_not_* illegal. They also ruled that unless a manufacturer actively promotes piracy, they cannot be held liable for what people do with the software.
So to review for you, TorrentSpy points you toward people who are sharing files you may want, and that’s all they do. They don’t suggest you steal stuff, and they don;t promote any method of copyright infringement. According to the Supreme Court, that means they’re not breaking the law. The MPAA (and the RIAA, too) don’t really care if the Supreme Court allows TorrentSpy to point you toward copyrighted material that’s shared. They are going to sue us all until we pay what they feel they deserve. And if that isn’t enough, they twist the meaning of copyright to protect themselves, and not the artists.
Now I am all for the protection of copyrighted works, and I don’t see a problem with the moral issue that somone’s movies or music shouldn’t be free _if there is percieved value._ But if reality is that people are sharing media, and that most people _still_ buy media, then there is a softer hand to be used to convince us to buy stuff.
As an aside for Americans, these big companies are just going to keep sidestepping the law, and continue to force our government to protect their interests, at the expense of ours.
