Comments on: Justices to rule on fate of file swapping

Supreme Court decision closely watched by Hollywood, Silicon Valley could come as soon as this week.

[Earl]

p2p is what computers were build for.

I can see both sides, but I feel that when I buy a record,(or what ever) It's mine & I can do with it ever I want to.
I can let a friend make a copy of it, if I wish.
In a way the movies,& record co. or getting free addvertizement.

[skeptik]

I feel I deserve...

Unfortunately your "feelings" don't count for crap in legal arenas.
Certainly you can see the difference between copying a CD for your friend and posting in on the internet where the entire world can copy it. If the latter were "fair use", then each CD would sell only 1 copy before being posted for everyone else to copy for free. Given the costs of producing music that single CD would cost a very large sum of money and nobody would be able to afford it unless they subsequently charged those copying a fee to recoup their outlay cost at which point they would have crossed over into commercial piracy - and no argument can me made for the legitimacy of that model.
All of which has nothing to do with the legality of P2P infrastructure... Though your comments give mucho credence to the entertainment industry's contention that P2P is the problem, not a legitimate tool.
I don't feel that P2P should be outlawed and I do feel the industry is overstepping reasonable use at every step, but we need to be careful we don't do the same if we wish to keep a credible claim for our rights.

[Had_to_be_said]

What if HAMMER manufacturers...

What if HAMMER manufacturers could "...turn a blind eye..." to the potential "illegal-uses" of their products..? What CHAOS would ensue..?

Oh, wait... MOST manufacturers CANNOT be held accountable for the "...illegal uses" of their products, ...IF those products also have "legitimate uses".

I guess we will see if the "courts" still, in any way, represent US ("...the people"), or if they really are merely more "yes-men" for the MEGA-MONEY INTERESTS.

We have here is.........

greedy RIAA and MPAA not getting their $$$$. It not the P2P servers fault. They only provide the service. How it is used should not rest on them. If we are going to place blame on things like P2P then we need to look at other services out there that are being used unlawfully like the Cellar Phone services. They are used to traffic drug sells so let shut them down for allowing that to happen across their service. Lets shut down the auto manufactory for building transportation devices that are used to transport illegal goods across the country. I hope you see where I going with this. There are answers to most all problems. Maybe groups like the RIAA and the MPAA need to get their customers to lower prices on their products. To start advancing their technology to prevent piracy. So don?t blame advanced technology as the problem for piracy. Blame the one that are still in the dark ages. There is still one advantage that the RIAA and the MPAA has is that the quality of their customer products are better than what you can download off these P2P servers.

MPAA in the darkages

I went to the MPAA website and I looked under Anti-Piracy. When I said in my last post about these groups in the darkages. Well here some proof. On the MPAA site it state this. "Anyone with information on suspected video piracy operations is urged to call the MPAA at 1-800-NO-COPYS (1-800-662-6797). Callers who provide information that leads to the arrest and conviction of persons engaged in video piracy may be eligible for a reward. A separate reward will be paid to the first person who provides the location of a pirate video lab. The pirate lab must consist of 30 or more VCRs at one location used to produce unauthorized copies of MPAA member company motion pictures."..... VCRs??? these day finding VCR tapes with movies are getting harder to find. We are in the DVD error now. VCRs is darkage products. There are DVD burners now. This surpport what I said in the last posting.