Judicial

All,

You might find the write-up below of interest. We are hoping to generate some discussion on the WIDE site about the implications of the MGM v. Grokster ruling for writing teachers.

THE WIDE RESEARCH CENTER @ MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

WIDE PAPER #1 MGM v. Grokster: Implications for Educators and Writing Teachers

James E. Porter, PhD Martine Courant Rife, MA, JD The WIDE Research Center Michigan State University

Date posted: June 28, 2005 URL for full article and discussion: http://www.wide.msu.edu/widepapers/grokster/

SUMMARY Yesterday, in an apparent loss for promoters and users of peer-to-peer

[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.

A Wired article by Michelle Dilio discusses a Danish legal case regarding the practice of Deep Linking, the construction of links from Site A to content deep within the network of Site B:

Experts were divided over the effect a ruling by a Danish court would have on the international Internet. But whatever happens in Copenhagen, intellectual property lawyers and Web watchers all agreed that deep-linking will soon hit increased legal barriers in the United States and Europe.

The bulk of the article, though, deals with the fact that decisions in the Danish court will not likely affect U.S. law. The issue, though, is a crucial one from freedom of speech perspectives, because it suggests that users must secure permission before pointing to material on someone else's site. - goto

On FindLaw, Chris Sprigman reports that the US Supreme Court will hear a suit challenging CTEA (The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act), good new for those interested in promoting progress in arts and sciences using copyright laws as they were originally intended.

Unless you earn your living as an intellectual property lawyer, you probably don't know that the Supreme Court has granted certiorari in Eldred v. Ashcroft , a case that will test the limits of Congress's power to extend the term of copyrights. But while copyright may not seem inherently compelling to non-specialists, the issues at stake in Eldred are vitally important to anyone who watches movies, listens to music, or reads books.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education (among other places) reports that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear Eldred v. Ashcroft in a case challenging the constitutionality of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (which extended the term of copyright to life of the author plus seventy years). - goto

Wired News reports on a case that might provide prior art to contest British Telecom's claim of a patent on hyperlinking.

Nobody should be more outraged over British Telecom's claim that it owns the patent to hyperlinking than Bob Bemer, who believes he may be the world's oldest, living computer programmer. Bemer, 82, isn't just taking a political stance against the recent legal filing by British Telecom that claims the company owns a patent on hyperlink technology. In 1960, Bemer -- whose coding contributions form the foundation of many modern computer systems -- came up with a critical coding concept that is now used in hyperlinks.

From Slashdot:

(outer-limits) writes "In a significant ruling in a California court, a judge has ruled the standard EULA licensing agreement to be invalid. This must be the biggest upset in software licensing ever. No more are we powerless End Users of software, having to agree to every restriction a software company makes (Expect an appeal on this, though)." Note that this is about the resale of bundled software, so it's not like EULAs are dead, but this ruling could have broad effects.

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