Scotusblog forum on Grokster

There's a very thoughtful discussion about the Grokster decision going on, as you would expect given the contributors, in the Scotus blog forum.

This is a fantastic example of the web facilitating rapid, in depth, public analysis of important matters of public policy, in a way that would not have been previously possible.

Copyright guru, William Patry, for example is able to share his deep disappointment with the Grokster decision, saying the court effectively avoided the substantive issue that it was asked to rule on i.e. whether the P2P companies met the Sony subtantial non infringing use test.

"Grokster raises to me serious issues about the ability of the Court to deal with hard copyright technnology issues. I had predicted after Grokster there were not 5 votes for either side and that proved true. But I didn't expect a phony 9-0 unanimous opinion, phony in the sense of tossing something out as if the Court had really done something. In my view they didn't. I'm happy they slapped down the Ninth Circuit's misreading of Sony. And I agree that the staple article of commerce doctrine shouldn't by itself insulate someone who actively induces infringement (although query whether the betamax would itself meet that test), but I find disturbing the real result of the case a 3-3 decision with three on the sidelines. The Court is only deciding 75 cases a year. It is shameful to me that 5 votes couldn't be found and that the Court instead took the easy way out"