Law and the Media Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Law and the Media - Case Study ExampleThe cogitate that was given up for this was that it seemed that these file-sharing companies were not innocent by reason of lack of knowledge as they had,The court unanimously agreed that distributors of engineering science that enables secure infringement can be found liable for their users actions, but lone(prenominal) if a plaintiff can point to evidence that the distributor took affirmative steps to foster infringement.4The court also said that actual knowledge was required to prove that these ISPs (Internet Service Providers) were liable for the copyright infringement. It is misleading to call this case Grokster because this company and the other jointly accused companies opted for an out of court elimination with the plaintiffs and Steam Cast was the only company that decided to go on to contest the case. This company past moved for a summary judgement at the US rule Court for the Central District of California, and was not allowed t o keep its communications and business plans privileged and confidential. It was found that Stream Cast was guilty of qualification the Morpheus software and the Open Nap network to find itself the same consumer base as Napster.Its open advertize to promote its business and blatantly allowed its users to infringe copyrights of Music companies and was even guilty of encouraging and assisting them in such means. The whole business model was based on copyright infringement according to the presiding Judge Wilson5 .The troupe was freely distributing this software and relying on sponsor revenues. The fact that it took no meaningful steps to halt its activities or prevent its customers from doing so .The only flimsy excuse that the company had was that it had given a warning to its customers in its user-agreement, yet it did little to enforce this agreement. Judge Wilson said in his concluding speech that,This court finds that no reasonable fact finder can conclude that Stream Cast pro vided Open Nap go and distributed Morpheus software without the intent to induce infringement.6Legal issues and academic opinion arising from the caseThe age of information technology has made the internet the copyright infringers playground. The convenience and low cost at which this has been done has prompted the law enforcement authorities to stand up to the challenges of the protection of intellectual property rights .This problem arose in the case of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing. This judgement has given a new dimension to the law of Copyright.