Grokster Not Looking Good

Still trying to digest the bad news here and get my hands on the decision..... At 8:40 AM I still have not seen the decision but the stories keep getting worse. I signed up for the Google alerts, so I can just read the same depressing few sentences over and over, without getting any real analysis. The major broadcast outlets, and even local stations, aren't covering the story. All they care about is dying Justices (more like dying justice) and Ten Commandments. I can just see Orrin shouting directives... "Get me the last draft of the Induce Act...now!"

At least I got to vent to the NY Times. I was called by Roben Farzad for comment for a story he is doing tomorrow. I started off with what this reversal of twenty years of innovation that has driven our economy is going to mean to us in the Valley and around the world. Then, after a brief, yet hopefully cogent, RIAA rant... he got a bit specific about my P2P activities and... I was frank.

As I've said before, I have a huge, handy, transportable library of music and I haven't paid a cent to the labels in many years. In fact, I'm in the black with them since cashing their settlement check for antitrust violation. Sure it was only $13., but, that's $13. more than I paid them... oh, was I supposed to buy a CD that year to qualify as one of their victims?? I don't have to pay them a cent to be one of their victims... I had to listen to airwaves dominated by MJ and Madonna... not to mention Mariah, for years, just like the rest of us. The whole world deserves reparations from these tasteless twits.

I must admit, I'm a bit worried about the exposure... these guys scare me, they are relentless. They guard their ill-gotten gain like the gold it is and they won't stop until they have drained every penny from Hummer, Bertelsman (did they settle?), Grokster and all the others, from the twelve-year-old Harlem girl on down... if you can go down from there. I mean, don't we even have any statute of limitations issues here? I thought they were short for torts... this poor girl they sued recently downloaded in '02.

Best I can tell so far, it looks like the court has been attentive to the promotional activities of the defendants, so there may be circumscription I'm not seeing yet. I'm still curious as to what basis they used to distinguish these facts from Sony. That fuckin Snocap brief has bothered me for a long time... "I can filter everything for you".... so, we'll see.