A lot of people are raving over MP3s, downloadable
videos and movies. But a lot of them are not conscious about the legal issues surrounding file sharing. For those of you who think that downloading music files in the internet and later sharing them to your friends, beware! This is considered illegal and even the courts will say so.
In the landmark case of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. vs. Grokster, Ltd. the United States Supreme Court where twenty eight
entertainment companies (most of them considered giants in the entertainment field) filed a suit against Grokster and Streamcast, P2P software distributors for contributing to the illegal activity of theft of copyrighted media such as music and movies. This case had a tremendous impact with regards to file-sharing over the internet, and the future of the industry of digital music. In the year 2003, a similar case was decided by a California federal court but the case was dismissed basing on the rule laid down in the 1984 case of Sony Corporation of America vs. Universal City Studios, Inc. This landmark case has ruled that a distributor should not be held liable regarding infringing of copyright of the original materials.
P2P or
peer-to-peer file sharing allows users to download music and video files from the internet without any legal permission from the copyright owners, which causes infringement on the material’s copyright.
