I'm working from home today, which means that I'm susceptible to diversion. I was doing well, until Ed Felten brought me a bunch of Grokster links. Dr. Felten is worried, others believe the court simply punted back to the lower courts, and industry lawyers love it.

The Christian Science Monitor doesn't seem to get it:

The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2001 that Napster could be held partly liable for copyright violations by those using its file-sharing program. The court ruled that Napster officials could have policed the illegal downloading activities through the company's centralized servers, but instead ignored the lawbreaking.

To bypass such legal liability, Grokster and StreamCast decentralized their servers, making it impossible for them to monitor how their file-sharing programs were being used.

Right. Not because maintaining central servers is needlessly slow and expensive, but because they're sneaky.

Forbes.com has a more encouraging take:

Why not compete with free download services on their own turf? Companies such as Apple Computer, RealNetworks, Napster and others are making a go of selling music online legally. They have a long, long way to before they even come close to the number of pirated downloads, but the early results are encouraging.

Make the media companies compete, and they'll find a way to innovate on their own. Give them an excuse to start suing entrepreneurs with new ideas, and they'll just become more complacent than they already are.

Leave it up to competition? That makes way too much sense.

I haven't read the decision yet (I need to get back to work!), and I don't know a lot about the law, but it seems to me that all is not lost for Grokster. My understanding is that this means there will be a trial in the Ninth Circuit, where Grokster will have a chance to show that they did not engage in inducement.

Meanwhile, there was also another relatively important technology decision today.

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