From the Chronicle: "Professors Join the Fray as Supreme Court Hears Arguments in File-Sharing Case"

[From the issue dated April 8, 2005] By ANDREA L. FOSTER Washington

U.S. Supreme Court justices struggled in a lively debate last week with how to balance the competing interests of the entertainment industry and developers of file-sharing technology. Some justices sharply questioned whether it was fair to hold inventors of a distribution technology liable for copyright infringement, while others suggested that it was wrong for a business to thrive on illegal copying.

In the case, MGM Studios Inc. vs. Grokster Ltd., movie and recording companies hope to put an end to the swapping of songs and videos online by holding the producers of peer-to-peer file-sharing software responsible for the copyright violations of users. Scholars, college administrators, and students are closely following the case.

http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i31/31a02701.htm (registration required)