杏吧原创

IMAGINE PCs without disc drives or CD or DVD burners. Forget about document scanners. And don鈥檛 even think about videoing TV shows. If movie studios, record companies and book publishers had had their way, such technologies might never have gone on sale. Why? Because all can be used to copy music, films, books and TV shows illegally.

It could have happened. Some 21 years ago, VCRs were almost outlawed after Universal City Studios filed a lawsuit against Sony Corporation of America seeking to stop it making and marketing the Betamax VCR, the world鈥檚 first domestic videotape recorder.

The case reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled against Universal. By the narrowest possible majority, 5 to 4, the judges ruled that a company that makes or distributes a technology with overt legal uses, such as a VCR that lets people watch TV at a later time, cannot be held liable if people choose to use it for an illegal purpose, such as copying movies for free lending or for sale.

Fast forward to today, and history may repeat itself. The Supreme Court in Washington DC is once again to hold sway over who dictates the path of innovation in entertainment.

Twenty-eight entertainment firms, led by MGM and supported by the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), have filed a lawsuit that seeks to shut down three dominant peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks and make their owners financially liable for the 鈥渕assive and rampant鈥� movie and music piracy that the plaintiffs say these networks are responsible for.

Brandishing the Betamax precedent, lawyers for P2P firms Grokster, Morpheus and Kazaa have argued that their systems have substantial legal uses and so, like Sony in 1984, they are not liable for the illegal actions of their users. They say the Betamax decision enshrined in law the principle that inventions do not have to have the ability to infringe copyright designed out of them.

鈥淚f you want a vibrant technology sector, you let innovators invent without forcing them to beg permission from movie moguls鈥�

That decision seeded the freedom that led to much of the recordable media technology we enjoy today 鈥� from DVD burners to iPods and TiVos. 鈥淭he message was that if you want a vibrant technology sector, you let the innovators invent without forcing them to beg permission from media moguls first,鈥� says Fred von Lohmann, senior attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a pressure group based in San Francisco.

So just what are the legal uses of P2P networks? Their defenders say they let people share their own pictures, sound files, video and documents as well as, for instance, make recordings of their own bands available to a worldwide audience. A lower appeals court has agreed, and ruled in favour of the P2P firms.

The studios are less trusting of users鈥� intentions. With support from the Department of Justice鈥檚 intellectual property task force, they now want the Supreme Court to reverse the lower court鈥檚 decision. 鈥淚t has been stipulated in the lower courts that over 90 per cent of the activity that Grokster promotes, encourages and profits from is illegal,鈥� says Amanda Hunter of the RIAA. Because P2P networks are 鈥渙verwhelmingly used for infringing purposes鈥� rather than legal ones, RIAA believes the Betamax precedent is not a relevant defence.

The P2P protagonists, however, have some powerful support in the form of 17 professors of computer science across the US. While they do not condone illegal file sharing, the academics say they fear that if the MGM case succeeds, people like themselves 鈥� who develop new networking and internet technologies that might be capable of unlawful use 鈥� may face legal action in future, and that this would hinder innovation. The Supreme Court鈥檚 decision is expected in July.