Billionaire Mark Cuban has announced that he will finance Grokster's defence against MGM's peer-to-peer lawsuit, which is expected to be argued before the US Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Cuban, the entrepreneur who sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7bn and who is now president of HDNet, a provider of high-definition TV programming, wrote in a blog entry on Saturday that he had agreed to fund the software company's defence after he was approached by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others.
The case centres on whether file-sharing software companies could be held legally responsible for copyright infringement on their networks.
Cuban, who's also the owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team, said a Grokster loss would create a stifling legal environment that would virtually eliminate technological innovation in the United States.
"If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only," Cuban wrote. "It will be a sad day when American corporations start to hold their US digital innovations and inventions overseas to protect them from the RIAA, moving important jobs overseas with them."
Cuban said his decision was also motivated by the fact that lengthy court cases have prohibitively high legal costs.
"It doesn't matter that the RIAA has been wrong about innovations and the perceived threat to their industry every single time," Cuban wrote. "It just matters that they can spend more [than] everyone else on lawyers."
The case focuses on Grokster and StreamCast Networks' Morpheus, popular file-swapping applications that are widely used to trade movies, music and software.
Studios and labels sued the companies in 2001, following successful legal campaigns against peer-to-peer trailblazer Napster. Attorneys for the entertainment conglomerates said the newer file-swapping services were, like Napster, building businesses based on copyright infringement.
But Grokster and StreamCast were built around a different technology than Napster. Their services involved a highly decentralised network of individual computers trading files among themselves, rather than a network controlled from a central location.
Lower-court judges said that the companies do not directly control what happens on their networks, that their software could be used for legal purposes and that the companies themselves aren't legally responsible for the actions of their users. The entertainment companies' appeal of that judgment led to the Supreme Court's planned hearing of the case on Tuesday.
Talkback
So if the techies lose its....
Bye Bye CD burner
Bye Bye Hard Drive
Bye Bye PC
Bye Bye Pen and Paper
They can all be used to 'copy' copyrighted material - what about my eyes and mouth? When will the luddites in the RIAA accept that they have missed the boat and need to redfine how they are going to operate?
Come on these RIAA idiots wont win, for that they have to get people to do what they want, even with a ruling that won't happen.
Think about Moores Law, that means tech has to double every 18 months, and without media what for?! Without copious media like Music, DVD's, TV programmes and home video why would I need more that my 3GHz CPU, my 200GB HDD, Firewire, Windows XP, 1GB RAM, DVD/RW, SUrround sound speakers -- it's all driven by media.
At £14.99 a CD, I'd have to say that the whole of the PC industry would come to a hault, yea really!!! I don't pay that, I'm not a mug and why should some BNaire get a better life than me, what is money anyway.
Without vast siolos of media collected by users, who needs a TB HDD, well then why are companies working toward it?! its so obvious!!!!
The dinosaur sues the snowstorm.
RIAA could be using these millions of dollars to adapt, improvise, and embrace new techology. They could enclose all the music videos in high quality on DVD with each music CD, they could include T-shirts, posters and other tangibles with their electronic product, or how about a % off concert tickets or draws for front row seats and to see the band backstage for legal purchasers? There have to be a hundred ways they could enhance their product.
No creativity, only hostility. They are trying to unlight the match; sue the snowstorm for the climate change. They had their day in the sun, and it looks like instead of evolving - this dinosaur is showing it's true nature by only thrashing around and trying to reverse the climate change while it becomes extinct; not caring what or who they hurt to get what they want.
And hopefully the courts will see this.
Always amazes me how people can justify piracy (99% of all peer to peer sharing is) just because a product is too expensive
A music company can charge £250 for a CD and expect you to sacrifice your first born child but that would not change the fact that anyone who pirates music is a criminal no different to a shop lifter or someone who breaks into your house and steals your video