The Debate over Sony-Betamax and Peer-to-Peer File Sharing: Will the Supreme Court Settle It in MGM v. Grokster?

摘要

In the legal debate surrounding peer-to-peer file sharing, no case has received more scrutiny than the US Supreme Court's decision in Sony Corp, of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. This is hardly surprising, as that decision is invariably at the center of the defense of claims that businesses based on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems are legally responsible for the direct copyright infringement by the users of those systems. What is surprising is that the reported P2P cases to date have taken such divergent views of whether and how P2P businesses can effectively invoke the so-called Sony defense. In Sony, widely known as the Betamax case, the Supreme Court concluded that, because the Betamax videocassette recorder was "capable of substantial non-infringing uses," the manufacturer of that product was not liable for purchasers' use of it to make unauthorized copies of television shows. Several cases have now sought to apply the teaching of Sony to claims by copyright holders that companies in the business of facilitating computer users' ability to exchange files over P2P networks are liable for those users' unauthorized distribution and copying of sound recordings. For the most part, these cases assume, as a threshold matter, that the Sony defense is available to P2P companies.