It's being overshadowed by the Terri Schiavo Circus and the Michael Jackson Fiasco, but right now the Supreme Court is hearing an interesting and possibly quite influential case about filesharing.

The issue at hand is whether copyright holders can sue companies whose product is used for illegal purposes, and it's not a new one. The court already ruled in favor of Sony and Betamax VCRs back in the early 80's, and I see no evidence that this ruling will be any different.

The bigger issue in my mind is why, 5 years after successfully shutting down Napster, record companies are still tilting at windmills and going after filesharing companies. They've already successfully sued individual users, and they're perfectly within their legal right to do so despite the questionable PR. Even if they're successful in shutting down Grokster, the company in question, 2 more will spring up in its place.

The main argument that the record companies have is that filesharing is costing them money in lost sales. I've yet to see hard evidence of this, but I definitely see evidence that suing everybody and everything that may have some possible connection to music on computers (who's next, WinAmp? The inventors of the Fraunhofer codec? Dell?) costs a hell of a lot of money.

CD prices have gone up despite the fact that the technology is becoming obsolete and manufacturing costs have gone down. The companies claim that this is due to rising marketing and production costs (and the omnipresent "lost sales due to piracy"), but how much of it is also due to legal costs? As much as I despise mp3s and always prefer to purchase CDs when possible, I really hate subsidizing the pointless legal struggles of a lazy industry that is making no attempt to adapt their marketing and business practices to a changing environment.

Posted by: rkc at March 30, 2005 9:07 PM