Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Peer To Peer
Thursday
August 19, 2004
For once, the infamous San Francisco-based 9th Circuit U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has made a wise decision. It ruled today that peer-to-peer network program producers are NOT responsible for people who use them to share copyrighted material (just like e-mail companies aren't responsible for copyrighted material shared via that forum). The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer v. Grokster case may still be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court (and a I suspect it will), but this has the potential to be the biggest ruling on this subject since the famous 1984 Supreme Court ruling in the Sony Betamax case. Yes, at one point the movie industry, which makes billions now on the home video market, fought to outlaw VCRs. Most people under 30 don't know about that, as history on that sort of thing is all too often forgotten. But I know about it, and I'm thrilled about today's decision.
The next time you wonder why the L.A. Clippers are too cheap to sign their high-priced players to long-term deals, perhaps this story on the Smoking Gun will shed some light into where Clippers owner Donald Sterling is spending his money.
The battle between Scott Massey and I in the PlayStation 2 sports wars continues to tilt in Scott's favor. He beat me tonight in Fight Night (he owns me in that game), MLB 2004 (which is incredibly fun, even when I lose) and Fifa Soccer 2001 (where it was him using a team from the Israel League to beat me using a team from the German league, which was funny on several different levels). However, I beat him in Madden 2005, and that's what matters. Scott mentioned that the turning point for us in that game was the infamous game where I returned two punts for TDs against him with Alvis Whitted of the Jaguars in Madden 2002. He's never been the same since. But Scott always gets mad when I don't mention the other video game battles on here... so there you go.
Tomorrow morning the trip to Nashville comes -- stay tuned.
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