Ginsburg, Jane C. --- "Copyright control v compensation: the prospects for exclusive rights after Grokster and Kazaa" [2009] ELECD 332; in Strowel, Alain (ed), "Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Secondary Liability in Copyright Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Secondary Liability in Copyright Law

Editor(s): Strowel, Alain

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847205629

Section: Chapter 4

Section Title: Copyright control v compensation: the prospects for exclusive rights after Grokster and Kazaa

Author(s): Ginsburg, Jane C.

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

4. Copyright control v compensation: the
prospects for exclusive rights after
Grokster and Kazaa
Jane C. Ginsburg

INTRODUCTION
On the last day of the 2004 Term, the US Supreme Court announced its much-
awaited decision in MGM Studios, Inc. v Grokster Ltd.1 Songwriters, record
producers and motion picture producers alleged that two popular file-`sharing'
networks, Grokster and Streamcast (dba Morpheus) should be held liable for
facilitating the commission of massive amounts of copyright infringement by
the end-users who employed the defendants' peer-to-peer software to copy and
redistribute films and sound recordings to each others' hard drives. The Court
reversed the Ninth Circuit's grant of summary judgment for defendants, hold-
ing that the technology entrepreneurs could be held liable for `actively induc-
ing' the end-users' acts of infringement. As consumer-wielded digital media
increasingly supplant the traditional intermediaries who made copyrighted
works available to the public (and who traditionally were the targets of copy-
right enforcement), courts have struggled to balance meaningful protection for
works of authorship against the progress of technological innovation. For
some observers, the weakening of copyright control is the necessary price to
pay for technological advancement.2 For others, authors' ability to maintain
exclusive rights remains a cornerstone of any copyright system as it adapts to
accommodate new modes of exploitation.3



1 125 S. Ct. 2764 (2005).
2 See, e.g., id at 2793 (Breyer, J. concurring); Lawrence Lessig (2004), Free
Culture: How Big Media Uses technology and the ...