Songs from the Commons 006

A Better Introduction to Grokster - A Modern Day Sony Betamax Case
In this week’s installation of The Grokster Chronicles, I will
explain how the Grokster case is really just a modern day
revisiting of the principles of the historical Betamax case. The
“Betamax” case refers to Universal vs. Sony, in which the Supreme
Court decided that a company was not liable for creating a
technology that some customers may use for copyright infringing
purposes, so long as the technology is capable of substantial
non-infringing uses. Said another way, the court decided that, when
a technology has many uses, the public cannot be denied the lawful
uses just because some (or many or most) may use the product to
infringe copyrights.