Decision of the Court

In the case of MGM v Grokster the court unanimously decided that Grokster was liable for copyright infringement. Grokster was ordered to pay 50 million dollars.Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court.
"The question is under what circumstances the distributor
of a product capable of both lawful and unlawful use is
liable for acts of copyright infringement by third parties
using the product. We hold that one who distributes a
device with the object of promoting its use to infringe
copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative
steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the
resulting acts of infringement by third parties."

Issues of the Case

The main issue of this case is that people are getting copyrighted works such as software and music without paying for them. There is no doubt that these people have stolen the files, but the company that made the software has no control of what people share on the peer-to-peer network. The main factor that decided the case is did the company that provided the software advertise it for the use of copyright infringement. The Court held that “one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.” http://www.copyright.gov/docs/mgm/index.html. if the company advertised that you can get music or software for free than they are liable for anything that their users do, if they did not advertise in any way then they might not be held responsible for infringing on the copyright act.
Another issue is that when people had problems opening copyrighted files they would email the provider and they would help them to make use of the file.“Respondents have sometimes learned about the infringement directly when users have e-mailed questions regarding copyrighted
works, and respondents have replied with guidance.” http://www.copyright.gov/docs/mgm/syllabus.pdf. This does not look too good for the company because it shows that they knew what was going on and they didn’t do anything to stop it, in fact they made it worse.

Eoc Week7

MGM v. Grokster,
Argued 3/29/2005, Decided 6/27/2005
Grokster is a free software that you can download off of the web, it allows people to “share” digital files between computers. MGM sued Grokster for copyright infringement because the users of the software were using it to infringe on the Copyright Act and MGM was accusing that Grokster intentionally developed the software for that purpose . The software was allowing billions of files each month to be shared between peer to peer networks.