Supreme Court okays Grokster, Morpheus lawsuits

Today the Supreme Court ruled that P2P networks, such as Grokster and Morpheus, could be sued for the copyright infringements of their users. The main issue is that their marketing, while it has not stated they support piracy, it does nothing to discourage piracy and in fact when Napster was taken down they claimed they were the alternatives to Napster. They also could not show good faith effort to try to stop piracy. This ruling DOES NOT change anything at the moment. It just allows the recording and movie industries to sue file sharing companies. You can read the Opinion of the Court here.

I have to say I agree with the decision of the Supremes. I’m tired of everyone throwing their hands up saying they’re not responsible for what people do with their products when they do nothing to discourage improper or illegal use. Copyrights are a fundamental part of our economy and were intended to be from the beginning of this country. Copyrights are even called for in the Consitution. The US is what it is today because of IP as are other countries. We have to protect this fundamental concept if we want to continue to have medical innovations, technological innovations… the list goes on.