How Groundbreaking is Grokster?
John T Cross[1] In June of 2005, the United States Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated opinion in the Grokster case.[2] In that case, the Court held two companies that distributed peer-to-peer file sharing software liable for contributory copyright infringement, based on the fact that people were using that software to make infringing copies of music and videos. Although the result of the case was not all that surprising, the path that the Court took to reach that decision proved more controversial. The Court did not decide the case using the substantial non-infringing use test that it established in its seminal 1984 Sony decision.[3] Instead, it held that the peer-to-peer software companies were liable because they had actively encouraged the users to infringe. The Courts approach has generated quite a bit of discussion among copyright experts. After all, the Sony case makes no mention of active inducement as a basis for contributory liability. Because Grokster does not fit So
