LA Times: File-Sharing Networks Relying on VCR Ruling. Two file-sharing networks--Napster Inc. and Aimster (later renamed Madster)--sought refuge in the Betamax case with no great success. Now, three popular successors--Morpheus, Kazaa and Grokster--are relying on Betamax in a critical pretrial skirmish. [Tomalak's Realm]
Betamax did not hold in the Napster and Aimster case because of a difference between time-shifting and distribution, or so I read it. And it’s true, there is a palpable difference between handing a tape of last night’s Friends and airing it on your own network. However, does that make the makers of Apache liable for everyone who defames another using Apache web servers?
A solution for the peer-to-peer software distributors may be to remove the server aspect of their software to mere discovery; distribution or publishing therefore becomes more of an active act of the person running the software, in the way that IRC file exchange is. But that loses a great deal of the power of these nodes, and I don’t mean computational power: there is a great stimulus to imagination when you can fire up your ’puter and think to yourself, almo.
As for useful purposes of the software, let me pose a couple: I downloaded a film clip of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and MP3s of a couple of his speeches. How can that not be a useful thing? Or imagine the poor disenfranchised and unfree Chinese and Iranians (Persians? or does that only apply to the Parsi and ancient Persians?): Radio Free Europe? Try KaZaa Free World!
Whew, that got me worked up.
5:26:23 PM 
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