Supreme Court To Here File Sharing Suit & Mark Cuban Backs Grokster With $$$

From DigitalMediaWire: "The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments tomorrow in MGM Studios v. Grokster, the landmark file-sharing case that will likely determine once and for all whether developers of file-sharing software like Grokster, Morpheus and Kazaa can be held liable for copyright infringement committed by file-swappers. The major record labels and movie studios filed the appeal after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August 2004 that the companies that produce such software are not liable, citing in its decision the 1984 Supreme Court "Betamax" precedent that legalized sales of the VCR in light of their "substantial non-infringing uses." Those backing the entertainment companies include the U.S. Solicitor General’s office and the Christian Coalition, while the American Civil Liberties Union and Consumer Electronics Association have sided with the file-sharing firms; groups of artists have voiced opinions on both sides of the issue. Dot-com billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has also announced that he will finance Grokster’s defense of the lawsuit, after being approached by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others. "If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only," Cuban wrote in his blog on Sunday. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in the case in June."

A link to Mark Cuban’s blog posting.

Other related articles:

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,67010,00.html 
http://tinyurl.com/6sa92 
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-grokster28mar28.story
http://tinyurl.com/6gxyw