Will Grokster spur more fair use litigation?
Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, whom I profile in Darknet and who did a nice job on yesterday’s PBS NewsHour (I was originally slated to appear), has some detailed posts at EFF Deep Links about the possible or likely effects of the Grokster ruling for the tech community. One of the more interesting posts is about the potential litigation around fair use in cyberspace: One potential consequence of the MGM v. Grokster ruling may be an uptick in courts deciding fair use cases involving personal, noncommercial activities like “time-shifting” and “space-shifting.” A variety of new digital technologies are advertised and promoted for uses that the technology vendors believe to be fair uses. For example, Time Trax promotes its technology for recording satellite radio, Mercora for recording music from webcasts, and Sling Media for transmitting your TiVo’d TV shows to yourself over the Internet. All maintain that these personal, noncommercial, nontranformative uses of co
