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Grokster wins

August 20th, 2004 · No Comments

The Ninth Circuit US Court held yesterday that P2P software makers Grokster and StreamCast are not liable for copyright infringement by users of their software. The key difference between this software and Napster (which was, of course, smacked down with extreme prejudice) is that Napster used a central server to index files shared on the network, whereas these companies do not. Of course, this ruling just gives the copyright industry a greater incentive to bribe Congress to pass more absurd legislation restricting what kinds of software we can use and write.