File-sharing milestone

Even kids - those who use Kazaa or BitStream, anyway - will be interested in this case. It pitted dozens of huge media companies against two small software companies (and the millions of file-sharers that use their services, Grokster and Morpheus). In a unanimous decision, a US federal court in California ruled Thursday that Grokster, Morpheus, and other P2P services, can't be held liable for the copyright violations of their users. The decision was similar to a milestone decision in 1984 that said VCR makers were not to be held liable for infringements of their customers. An appeal to the Supreme Court is likely, says the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which argued on behalf of the P2P defendants in the case. Here's the EFF's press release and here's MGM v. Grokster.