The element of direct infringement is undisputed here, but the Ninth Circuit applied the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Sony Corp. To prove a defendant liable under the theory of contributory copyright infringement, three elements are required: (1) direct infringement by a primary infringer, (2) knowledge of the infringement, and (3) material contribution to the infringement. The Copyright Owners appealed, and the Ninth Circuit was forced to decide whether distributors of P2P file-sharing software may be held contributorily or vicariously liable for infringing acts committed by users of this software. The United States District Court for the Central District of California granted partial summary judgment to the Distributors on issues of contributory and vicarious infringement. Accordingly, the Copyright Owners claimed that they are entitled to monetary and injunctive relief because the Software Distributors are liable for vicarious and contributory copyright infringement pursuant to 17 U.S.C. The Copyright Owners allege that ninety percent of the files exchanged through the P2P file-sharing software offered by the Software Distributors are copyrighted materials, seventy percent of which is owned by the Copyright Owners. The software at issue here, which is freely distributed by Grokster and StreamCast, provides a method of cataloging the a user's digital content for sharing so that other users may download this content to their computers via the Internet, and in turn, share this content with other users of the same or similar software. In a P2P network, each computer enables digital content to be shared with all other computers on the P2P network, thus making each computer act as both a server and a client for this content. This raises the question of where the line should be drawn between copyright protection and technological innovation.Ī P2P distribution network is different from a typical Internet connection because such networks usually lack a centralized source (namely, a single server or server farm) from which the consumer (namely, the client) obtains information and content. ![]() Legal debates continue to struggle with this new generation of products and services that facilitate the copying, customization and portability of digital works. However, this free exchange of content is not welcomed by everyone songwriters, music publishers, and motion picture studios (collectively, "Copyright Owners") brought a copyright infringement action against Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks, Inc., distributors of peer-to-peer ("P2P") file-sharing computer networking software (collectively, "Software Distributors"). However, the Court would also like to avoid criticism for overstepping its power by censoring distributors, which may lead to a verdict in favor of the software distributors. The United States Supreme Court may likely rule in favor of the copyright owners, as the Court generally does not want to sanction the kind of lawless behavior which is undoubtedly taking place across these networks. are contributorily and vicariously liable for any copyright infringement committed by users of their software. Grokster, a group of copyright owners allege that peer-to-peer software distributors Grokster Ltd. ![]() Copyright owners, such as songwriters, music publishers, and motion picture studios, have not gone unaffected and claim that the majority of peer-to-peer file sharing involves copyrighted material of which the users are benefiting without any monetary compensation accruing to the copyright owners. ![]() The use of peer-to-peer file sharing software thrives in the area of music and motion pictures, where users easily share digitized music and movie files with one click of the mouse.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |