Grokster Shutting Down? 302
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo news is reporting that Grokster is shutting down. In a settlement with Hollywood and the music industry Grokster will be permanently banned from 'participating directly or indirectly in the theft of copyrighted files and requires the company to stop giving away its software.'" A continuation on their deal with Mashboxx, or the end of grokster entirely?
Quite simply... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Quite simply... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Quite simply... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Quite simply... (Score:2, Interesting)
What'd they do to PJ??? (Score:3, Funny)
never mind.
Re:What'd they do to PJ??? (Score:3, Insightful)
But Grokster... I could take it or leave it. I've never used it. The only suspicious thing is not being able to distribute their software anymore. There are far more dangerous things that are still allowed to be sold
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Grokster is dead (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Grokster is dead (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Their Web site says: (Score:3, Funny)
no kidding (Score:4, Insightful)
It's one thing to shut them down. It's another thing entirely to require them to say something that sounds like a scolded child. I can't *prove* sounding like a scolded child was part of the deal, but i don't think i'm out of line assuming that that statement is less than 100% voluntary
Re:no kidding (Score:2, Insightful)
Pretty much like having people spread stolen screeners of your not-yet-released film to thousands or millions of best friends they've never met know isn't exactly 100% voluntary for the filmaker, either. I think that's the whole point.
Re:Their Web site says: (Score:2)
Not that they're still needed; the gnutella design doesn't require a central server to operate, and lots of open-source alternatives exist.
Banned from "stealing"? (Score:2)
Propaganda from the AP (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, wait, I thought file-sharing technology was used for a variety of things. Yeah, it's mostly file-swapping of copyrighted material, but hardly the only use. According to the AP, let's just ignore the legal uses entirely and pretend that the whole purpose of this technology was to steal.
Re:Propaganda from the AP (Score:5, Informative)
There are plenty of good uses for P2P. Copyright infringement, while popular, is not a "good" use.
Yep (Score:2, Funny)
...what aboot... (Score:2, Insightful)
What about bands that put their music on P2P networks in order to get noticed? Or bands that are aware that their music is being shared and don't mind?
What about them? Believe it or not, 99% of the sharing on P2P networks is illegal, copyright-infringing content. In fact, that was the networks' primary purpose - the illegal sharing of copyrighted material. Also, that's why they lost their court case - even though the service has other uses, it is overwhelmingly used for piracy.
Compare this to a bong and to a VCR. A VCR has its legal uses - taping a show for personal viewing later harms no-one, and is in fact fair use. Though it can be used to pirate videos, that's not its usual use.
Now, compare it to a bong. Sure,a bong has other uses such as:
a bong's primary purpose is to get high. Hence, where getting high is illegal, bongs are generally illegal. (In fact, they're called "drug paraphenalia." Now, not to open a pandora's box of hippies and "legalize pot" posts, but back to my point:
Grokster was shut down for piracy. The network was created solely to host illegal content, and the vast majority of its traffic was little more than piracy. The few bands that actually used its service can always create/host their own torrents - much easier and better, IMO.
So, don't debate the effects of the "loss" of this "service" to a handful of bands - start debating something more meaningful, like the proper extent of Intellectual Property rights or the fairness of the recording industry's oligopoly.
<GetsOffSoapBox/>
Re:Dingdingding! (Score:5, Interesting)
Follow the money
The whole outcry against file sharing comes down to control. Most money in music is made on the back catalog. He who owns the distribution channel owns the back catalog and makes the money.
When the next Beatles, or Elvis shows up on the scene, they want to see them signed with a major label, not issuing their CD's via bittorrent, other p2p and their website.
Just like the agents in the matrix, they control all the doors...and they want to keep it that way.
Re:Propaganda from the AP (Score:3, Insightful)
Grokster might have had an easier case if they had made at least a cursory effort to prevent illegal file sharing. As it is they made it clear that they expected and encouraged you to trade files illegally, and that was going to cause them headaches in court.
Re:Propaganda from the AP (Score:2, Insightful)
{{BEGIN SARCASM}}
But I really do need to backup my X-Box games!! And I use P2P to share family photos with my grandma, isn't that what it was made for?
{{END SARCASM}}
I definitely agree with you on this one, P2P is by nature a file-sharing/content-stealing platform. If everyone just used Bittorrent for legit files (which they pretty much do) and didn't install P2P software then we'd pretty much be in a good place right now, but instead people still feel the weird desire to download the horrible crap that is RIAA labeled music without paying the band.
If a movie/song is worth stealing, then it is certainly worth buying. I mean, c'mon, just watch TV and listen to the radio if you are that dependent on the media. I used to download tons of crap, then I had something as simple as my taillights on my truck stolen, and realized how crappy it feels. I'd love for someone defending the downloading of movies and music to have something small stolen every day or two and see how they like it.
But yes, BitTorrent is P2P done right, and from my experience, it works much better than any P2P client ever has, and it is harder to download illegal content without someone getting into trouble. No wonder we don't hear as much about it in the news, other than to hear another moron got caught hosting torrents for someone else's intellectual property.
Re:Propaganda from the AP (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember how awful it was when somebody stole my headlight. I was in the car out in the parking lot one cold night, just letting the engine warm up when some nasty thief came up and used my headlight to check something in his wallet. Damned thieves have no right to steal my light!
Insightful? No. FUD! (Score:5, Interesting)
I run a community gaming site that catalogs maps for First Person Shooters. With over 10 GB of maps and growing, P2P combined with magnet links is an incredibly valuable method of file distribution that doesn't require loads of cash, server cycles and bandwidth to operate and maintain. It boasts hundreds of downloads a week. I'd hardly call that "occassional."
No tracking, content control and targeting? Not convenient? You have to share back to get good rates? File descriptions are poor?
Any qualified web admin can implement tracking on the web site that's listing the download whether it be magnet, torrent or otherwise. As well, some P2P apps provide limited download tracking. BitTorrent on it's own does not provide tracking either (you'd have to analyze torrent downloads in the server log files), so your point is kind of moot.
Not convenient? Ever heard of a magnet link? [wikipedia.org] You put a link on your page. Clicking it launches the user's P2P app and starts the download. How is that not convenient? On a comparison to BitTorrent I'd say it's just as, if not more convenient (I don't have to delete old torrent files with magnet links). Compared to HTTP downloads, all P2P tech is obviously less convenient since you have to download P2P software.
Share back to get good rates? Funny... that's how BitTorrent works and a good number of other P2P networks don't.
As I mentioned, magnet links [sourceforge.net] eliminate the problems of the "vast network of crap." They contain a file hash [sourceforge.net] similar to a torrent file and can contain one or more source seed server addresses. They can be put on a website just like any URL with the added benefit that they don't require you to have a one-to-one relationship of all your files to torrent files.
The fact that you even need to maintain and distribute torrent files is a pain. If I've got 4,000 files I want to distribute via BitTorrent, it requires that I maintain 4,000 torrent files. Granted, a software author may not have 4,000 files, but the requirement to maintain them still exists regardless.
The consumer only gets faster downloads with BitTorrent if they are able to get it configured and playing nice with their particular setup. Most, but not all, "average Joes" I've tried to sell BitTorrent on always complain about painful tweaking and crappy speeds because of it. This is primarily because BitTorrent requires you to upload back to the swarm, while others do not.
And a BitTorrent author only pays less for bandwidth if there are a large number of continually connected seeds and peers. If not, the
Re:Insightful? No. FUD! (Score:4, Interesting)
My arguments against traditional P2P lie almost soley in their typical or originally intended use, which is to connect to the network with a client and start searching. This is not particularly convenient to the end user searching for legitimate content. It's much simpler for them to connect to your website and use your magnetic links, which is analogous to connecting to your website and clicking on torrent links.
If I had been more educated about magnetic links, I would have lumped them in with my arguments in favor of that type of file sharing.
Re:Propaganda from the AP (Score:2)
The playlist sharing makes it a very convenient way to get music. You find a playlist from someone with a bunch of songs you already have on it (the software helps you), and then just right click to download any others. I think there are dedicated programs like irate that do this with specifically free music, and of course you can just use audioscrobbler and search for the songs once you find a band you like, but it's still a nice way to do things.
Re:Propaganda from the AP (Score:2, Interesting)
Peer-to-Peer networks are evil except for "Bittorrent type"[sic] networks?
This is what the entertainment industry believes. A P2P file sharing system designed to preserve accountability would allow infringements to be easily traced to a perpetrator, discouraging rather than "inducing" infringement. Under BitTorrent, it takes a person to run a tracker, make a .torrent file, and upload the .torrent file to the tracker, and no express provisions are made for anonymity. Thus BitTorrent makes it easier to trace an act of infringement than Gnutella or KaZaA or eMule does, making it more likely to prevail under the MGM v. Grokster test.
Re:Propaganda from the AP (Score:2)
I think that P2P should be legal because we already have copyright laws that should encompass all of this, no need to get specific IMHO. Plus, poorly worded legislation could affect technologies like Bittorrent that are currently being used by companies to distribute materials (in fact I'm seeing torrents more and more these days from all kinds of different companies).
Temporary Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a temporary victory only for the RIAA. They can't change the fact that their business model is becoming obsolete.
Re:Temporary Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
Their business model is only half of it. Freeloaders are the other half.
Re:Temporary Victory (Score:5, Informative)
BTW: All those Pepsi adds where they look like they are anti-RIAA make me laugh, since the RIAA made cash from the legal music downloads.
The tech community???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cue the almost unanimous outcry about how this guy is not speaking for us.
Re:The tech community???? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The tech community???? (Score:2, Funny)
I'm curious... (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems you just can't fight corporate giants with billion dollar legal power...
Re:I'm curious... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'm curious... (Score:2)
Flicker, Pillage and Larceny^W^WFlorida Power and Light, doing thier part as ??AA whores.
Napster... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Napster... (Score:2)
Not a big loss, really. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a big loss, really. (Score:2, Insightful)
As long as pirates exist, P2P will exist.
This is not entirely correct... As long as pirates exist, they will utilize some form of technology to carry out their piracy, but it is incorrect to say, as your statement implies, that it has always been and will always be P2P. P2P is just one of the current common methods. Who knows what new forms it might take in the future.
Re:Not a big loss, really. (Score:2)
They will not Win (Score:3, Interesting)
grokster homepage text (Score:5, Informative)
Re:grokster homepage text (Score:2)
Well doh, that's been the case for the last 200 years or so and hasn't changed. What the Supreme court tok a 9-0 vote on was that offering a service that endorsed or promoted copyright infringement was illegal. That is a very nice way of saying that they'd probably lose such a case and decided to settle.
Get it while you can... (Score:2)
Historical Precedent when Xerox was Outlawed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Historical Precedent when Xerox was Outlawed (Score:5, Insightful)
Sarcasm is a more useful rhetorical device when the truth that it (directly or indirectly) points out resonates with the sarcastic statement being made. But since Xerox didn't ever position its products as a way to "get free stuff" or spread around copyrighted works by the millions, their equipment's use in copyright infringement was despite their corporate position and publicly proclaimed admonishments. The P2P services that have found themselves in trouble have been loudly supporting piracy since the get-go. Intent is the difference, and lack of it makes your example fall flat. Maybe more fun to allude to old-style forgeries, counterfeiters, or all those other classical (and already blatantly understood as illegal) methods to make your point. Um, except the point wouldn't mean as much.
Re:Historical Precedent when Xerox was Outlawed (Score:2)
Re:Historical Precedent when Xerox was Outlawed (Score:2)
That's why the RIAA isn't going after FTP servers, HTTP servers, IM file transfer features, etc - those technologies were created for non-infringing uses and are predominantly used that way. Anyone that thinks Grokster was created for sharing of only public-domain content is smoking crack.
Re:Historical Precedent when Xerox was Outlawed (Score:2)
Well, go sit in a library and tell me what % there is in violation of copyrights. Yet, when the subject of libraries and such makes it to court, they are still protected and allowed to continue in their ways.
Re:Historical Precedent when Xerox was Outlawed (Score:2)
If comparing a library copy machine to Grokster is the best argument that can be made it's no wonder Grokster was shut down. People complain about the RIAA going after a "technology" (P2P) but the bottom line is that they didn't sue "P2P" and they didn't shut down "P2P". They sued the creators of two products - Napster and Grokster that were both created for, and primarily used for, copyright infringment.
Yes.. it's stupid that they are trying to support their outdated biz model by suing the companies using the very technology they should be adopting.. blah blah.. but trying to compare Grokster to Xerox doesn't hold water.
If anything we should be upset that the irresponsible management at Napster and Grokster that created and supported products primarily used for piracy that have since put all P2P technology in a poor light.
Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:5, Insightful)
Righteous anger its-not-theft-there's-no-deprivation-of-property flamewar to begin in 3... 2... 1...
Seriously, though, if you want a certain company's product, pay for it. If you wouldn't pay $0.01 for it, then why bother downloading it at all?
And just to forestall the inevitable, NO, I DON'T WORK FOR THE RECORDING INDUSTRY. I just believe that if you don';t think a product is worth the price offered, then you shouldn't buy the product... nor should you look to the black market for the product. Do without, it won;t kill you. And by not pirating the product, you won't help drive the *AA's assertions that they are losing a ton of cash to piracy.
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:2)
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:2)
I don't buy the product, sales go down, and that's used to claim 'our sales have dropped - it must be pirates stealing it!' and they get laws which add even greater weight to DRM measures, thus making any products I do buy even more onerous to use.
Just for once, I'd like a lobby that supports the customers position get laws written for our benefit, or products made better instead of worse.
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:2)
(1) Ridiculous DRM
Well, all this does is lower your perceived value of the product -- making you less likely to purchase it. It should lower everyone's perceived value of it, so maybe tons of people won't buy it.
(2) Falling sales figures used to calculate piracy levels
This is a huge problem. Hey, our sales are down -- it must be teh pirates! This is accounting that never should be allowed to fly.
"I'd like a lobby that supports the customers position get laws written for our benefit"
I'd like a car full of ice cream, but it won't happen unless I go out and buy the ice cream. Call or write to your legislator yet?
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:2)
And that claim (when it comes to products not selling, most likely because of poor quality in the first place), would indeed ring hollow if you couldn't immediately find hundreds or thousands of places "sharing" even the worst movies, all the time. It would be nice to say that they're BSing when it comes to the crappy movies, but the piracy is rampant on big (good) movies because lots of people don't feel like paying for their entertainment, and it's rampant on the not-very-good stuff because people think that it's not worth paying for it, so who will mind. It's too bad that the behavior you can actually see happening around in you in the P2P space does look exactly like what the content creators are complaining about. It makes them look... correct.
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:2)
This doesn't really apply -- people willing to purchase for $0.00 != people willing to purchase for MSRP.
"but the piracy is rampant on big (good) movies because lots of people don't feel like paying for their entertainment"
This is where it is damaging to pirate movies, because it is fuel for the *AA's claims that they are losing revenue. The problem is that the *AAs claim that the 'lost sales' that can be extrapolated for the good flicks can also be extrapolated the same way for the crap films.
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:2)
Nope, Grokster is a popular program for sharing not just movis and music, but software and documents as well as games, some legal, some not... and the flap is over copyright infringement... not theft... copyright infringement..... how many times must these people be fucking around with the language? Either that or the writers who wrote this were stoned and/or suseptible to bull and brainwash.
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:5, Informative)
Suppose you had a girlfriend (just for the sake of the argument). If someone looks at your girlfriend in a weird way, you cant say it's a rapist. You can make all analogies you want, and say that the guy has X-ray goggles, but some guy who looks at your girlfriend is not f**kin your girlfriend. You can even say that you want him to pay, because she is a stripper, and charges for people looking at her tits, and he is causing you lost revenue.
This is much the same. People who copy songs or movies are not doing anything that they could go to jail for. It's a civil issue. They risk being sued. They are not thieves. They are copyright infringers. It's just another thing, and calling one thing with the name of another thing is not healthy, specially for legal stuff. It ends up contaminating the original concepts. The whole idea of copyright infringement not being theft is that copyright is not something sacred, it's just a "temporary" government granted monopoly, and by infringing that monopoly you might or might not hurt the guy that the monopoly was assigned to, so it's his decission to sue you or not.
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:2)
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:2)
I would pay $0.01 for it. But nowhere's willing to sell it to me for less than 1GPB.
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:2)
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:2)
You're allowed to reject the vendor's terms -- just as much as he's allowed to reject yours. If you're not both happy, then there's no deal; you part with all your money, but no rights to his content other than what's legally allowed outside of any deal. That's fair.
Re:Uh-oh... bad wording choice there, Mr. AP (Score:2)
Article Says BitTorrent is a Service (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this true? I thought it was a file transfer protocol.
Re:Article Says BitTorrent is a Service (Score:2)
Re:Article Says BitTorrent is a Service (Score:2)
Color me late (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course given the stupidity and greed of the **AAs it would not surprise me to see them attempt to crush BT either by going after Bram Cohen or by having their bought and paid for congresscritters write an exceptionally broad addendum to the DMCA that would ban any development or distribution of P2P software. Of course the inevitable consequences of such a ban will be disastrous, but they'll take several election cycles to materialize, which is far beyond the horizon of the aforementioned congresscritters.
Dead (Score:2, Funny)
Timeline: (Score:5, Insightful)
1995: We'll copy-protect audio CDs. Piracy "stopped."
1997: We'll copy-protect DVDs. Piracy "stopped."
2001: We'll shut Napster down. Piracy "stopped."
2002: We'll shut Kazaa down. Piracy "stopped."
2005: We'll shut Grokster down. Piracy...
Re:Timeline: (Score:2)
Opensource software is popular because its so widespread, and thats because it has such a low cost of entry for a programmer. Vi, a compiler (or interpreter) and you are set to go, been the same since BASIC was bundled with a computer (my earliest experience was teh C64).
Unfortunately, the same cant be said for music or movies - the cost of entry is a lot higher, and a lot less people have the talent to pull it off. I hold the people who can play musical instruments or sing or act in high regard, they are doing something I could never do.
Re:Timeline: (Score:2)
"ooo...i got quake 18 yesterday and it doesn't even come out till next week."
"can i have a copy?"
"sure, but it sucks, its just like quake 1-17, I already tried it for an hour and quit from boredom and deleted it"
Re:Timeline: (Score:3, Informative)
Only the lock on distribution channels prevents them from becoming popular.
And that is what this is really all about.
Support alternate music by going to places like "Magnatune.com" where the music is worth what you decide to pay for it and the artists get 50% of the what you pay... not 10% (itune) or 0% (most music contracts actually leave many musicians deeper in debt after a successful album due to funny accounting practices.)
Re:Timeline: (Score:2)
It is, practically speaking, not possible to shut down modern p2p applications, once released into the wild, because they programs themselves form the network. Of course, if there are bugs, or lacking features, you need some central codebase to improve upon, etc.
Re:Timeline: (Score:2)
No problem, just open-source it. Suddenly there's a java port of the client on sourceforge, a myriad of clients sporting new features and increased resilience, and an entire cvs tree on Freenet.
Ok so that last one is pretty unrealistic as of yet, but otherwise... a good and popular enough P2P program just won't be shut down.
New York Times: Grokster File-Sharing Service Shut (Score:3, Informative)
In Other News.. (Score:3, Funny)
Indirectly liable? WTF? (Score:2)
So does that mean i can sue Ford because some moron hit me while driving a mercury?
Oh, and wasnt some of the 'offenders' using Grokster improperly using Windows? Then Microsoft is at fault too.
This is insane.
Re:Indirectly liable? WTF? (Score:2)
Re:Indirectly liable? WTF? (Score:2)
With regards to TiVO, time-shifting and space-shifting that do NOT involve shifting to other people, or the bypassing of digital access protection methods, still tend to be safe. Showing a program to your friends in a non-commercial and private setting will be considered fair use. Don't bother claiming that everybody on millions-wide file sharing network is your friend, however; do that and you're doing a public performance, which is one knock against you in the 'is this fair use' question.
Justifiable homicide (Score:2)
What about guns marketed to kill people (aka "home protection")?
Two words: justifiable homicide [wikipedia.org].
See the IP Institute Page for More (Score:3, Informative)
http://ipinstitute.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Analogy with guns? (Score:2, Interesting)
I believe replacing "guns" with "file sharing apps" wouldnt make the statements above invalid.
So the way I see it, the only real difference is guns have a huge corrupt lobby group FOR it, while file sharing apps have a huge corrupt lobby group AGAINST it. Ethically/morally, I don't see a difference.
Regulation of file trading is still dangerous (Score:2)
Because, if ONLY "authentic licensed" works can be traded, what stops a government to decide if a particular file (i.e. controversial news of some chinese blogger text) is "illegal"?
Unregulated file sharing networks must keep existing. Let the RIAA sue users if they want, but DONT touch freedom of speech.
Re:Regulation of file trading is still dangerous (Score:2)
** If memory serves, there has been at least one case in which a local government group copyrighted a code of regulations and prevented the free redistribution thereof. This does strike me as extremely perverse, but more of an abuse by government workers than a flaw in the concept of copyrights, since it's far more of a problem to switch governments than it is to choose a different book to read or movie to watch.
It's not theft, it's murder...Murder!!! (Score:3, Funny)
e.g.
Only a small percentage of Grokster's customer base were not murdering music files, that's why they got shut down. I agree that murder of artist's music should not be allowed.
Re:It's not theft, it's murder...Murder!!! (Score:2)
Re:Besides Bittorrent and Usenet.... (Score:2)
Re:Besides Bittorrent and Usenet.... (Score:2)
(Just to make sure, that was ironic, of course. In reality, I have no idea why anyone would pay for such a service, either, *especially* if they're going to use it for copyright infringement purposes (which I do not advocate)).
Re:Besides Bittorrent and Usenet.... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. People are at best ignorant, at worst stupid.
2. The service might actually provide some value-add. Like news-servers, they offer search, retention, stability and download bandwidth without upload (very nice if you're on a very lopsided connection).
3. No matter how you twist it, bulk data is very cheap compared to the IP embodied in those data. You might as well ask "Why would one PAY for CD-Rs to share files?"
4. People are already paying for it. Many people have broadband connections faster than they otherwise would have for the prupose of illegally downloading something off the net.
5. To legitimize themselves. I've heard several people who were using Napster who quit when they were convicted. Everything up to then was like "unclear" even though the users in question were blatantly violating copyright.
Those are just the ones I can think off of the top of my head. If you want it summed up on one line: It's better to pay a little than to pay a lot.
Kjella
Re:Besides Bittorrent and Usenet.... (Score:5, Informative)
Overnet
Emule-kademlia
BitTorrent
Fasttrack (Kazaa, Imesh, Grobster)
FileTP (FTP/HTTP downloads)
Gnutella (Bearshare, Limewire,etc)
Gnutella2 (Shareaza)
Soulseek
Direct-Connect
Opennap
Most of them are accessable by using a MLdonkey client, some are still in the works. MLdonkey Can be found at http://www.nongnu.org/mldonkey/ [nongnu.org]
Re:Besides Bittorrent and Usenet.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Besides Bittorrent and Usenet.... (Score:2)
Any other programs like Mute out there that people here have tried out?
Re:should be in the clear then (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably the closest thing to that would be when a filmaker sends a screener, under the terms of a strict agreement with the recipient, to critic or other party for preview. The screener stays the property of the filmaker, and the guy that takes that filmaker's data (even if they eventually return the original media) and gives it out to a couple hundred thousand special "friends" over the 'net can pretty safely be said to have stolen that material. Certainly by any reasonable person's evaluation of the situation (say, while sitting on a jury), that's not so different than running off with any other trade secret or other proprietary information. That scenario, of course, is scarcely imaginary. We've seen it many times already.
Re:should be in the clear then (Score:2)
Re:should be in the clear then (Score:2)
Re:should be in the clear then (Score:2)
Re:** Puts on his "Slippery Slope Guy" hat ** (Score:2)
Re:Writer sounds biased. (Score:2)