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Digital Tweed: The Morning After Grokster
7/21/2005
Viewed through the filter of the Grokster decision, the SBC/Yahoo! billboard could be read as encouragement to infringe on copyright. Paraphrasing Justice Souter in Grokster, “the [probable] unlawful objective is unmistakable.” The SBC/Yahoo! billboard, like the marketing efforts promoting Grokster and Morpheus, can be read as encouraging “recipients [customers] to…download copyrighted works,” while the advertising reflects “active steps to encourage infringement.” Perhaps the Grokster decision will prompt the RIAA and others in the media industries to turn their attention to P2P as a consumer issue, one that g'es well beyond campus networks. Some months ago, an RIAA official told me that the association’s press releases have targeted colleges and college students over consumers and consumer ISP services (for example, Adelphia, Comcast, Earthlink, SBC, TimeWarner, Verizon, and others) because colleges respond to the threat of litigation, whereas consumer ISPs and telcoms view litigation as a cost of doing business. But now that Justice Souter and his colleagues on the Supreme Court have told us that intentionality could lead to liability (“the unlawful objective is unmistakable”), perhaps the consumer ISPs will begin to acknowledge that they too have an obligation to promote copyright education, as opposed to promoting, aiding, and abetting copyright infringement.
Kenneth C. Green, visiting scholar at The Claremont Graduate University, is the founding director of The Campus Computing Project, a comprehensive, continuing study of the role of information technology at higher education institutions in the United States (www.campuscomputing.net).
View more articles by Kenneth Green.
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