US Congress Told to Wait on File Sharing Action

Congress should probably wait and see how lower courts apply a recent landmark Supreme Court ruling on file-sharing networks before trying to legislate on the subject, the U.S. official in charge of copyrights said on Wednesday.

The Supreme Court's decision in June that anyone who distributes a device used to infringe copyright is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by others may well have resolved questions about boundary-setting in file-sharing networks for now, said Marybeth Peters, the U.S. Register of Copyrights.

But the Supreme Court also sent the case back to a lower court for further action on whether the file-sharing networks encouraged its users into infringing action.

"It may be that legislation should be enacted, but my own preference would be to see how the courts deal with this at this time," Peters told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The ruling to date has caused a ripple effect among file-sharing services. Several have curtailed operations or sought to align themselves with legitimate business partners.

The president of the developer of the popular file-sharing site eDonkey testified on Wednesday that he expected all existing open peer-to-peer companies in the United States to cease operating in coming months due to the legal uncertainty surrounding their operations.

He warned there was a danger of driving all peer-to-peer networks offshore, but said his company would comply with a cease-and-desist letter it had received from the trade group Recording Industry Association of America.

"The direction we're headed in is compliance rather than litigation," Sam Yagan, president of MetaMachine Inc., developer and distributor of eDonkey.

"Because we cannot afford to fight a lawsuit, even one we think we would win, we have instead prepared to convert eDonkey's user base to an online content retailer operating in a 'closed' P2P (peer-to-peer) environment," he said in testimony.

He told reporters after the hearing he had been talking with Ali Aydar, the chief operating officer of SNOCAP Inc., a company formed by Napster founder Shawn Fanning to enable authorized digital distribution of content through peer-to-peer service.

Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at

formatting link
. Hundreds of new articles daily.

Reply to
Reuters News Wire
Loading thread data ...

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.