US Supreme Court To Hear P2P Case

The Supreme Court said on Friday that it will hear a case deciding whether file sharing services like Grokster and StreamCast Networks can be held liable for the copyright infringement of their users, Dow Jones Newswires reported. The recording industry said that it is losing up to $1 billion a year in sales to illegal downloaders. "The infringement Grokster and StreamCast foster is inflicting catastrophic, multibillion dollar harm," the entertainment industry said in its high court appeal. Grokster and StreamCast, however, argue that current copyright laws don’t cover new computer technologies, such as file-sharing, and urged that Congress be allowed to decide the issue. The case stems back to 2001, when the entertainment industry sued the two services. That case was dismissed, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently ruled in favor of the peer-to-peer networks. The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments in March, with a ruling following by June 2005.