Napster has history on its side – kind of

Twenty-four years ago, the movie industry sued Sony over a new consumer appliance: the videocassette recorder. A lower court found Sony, like Napster, guilty of creating an instrument of copyright infringement. That court, too, focused on how the technology was actually being used at the time the suit was brought. As the case wound its way through the appeals process, however, the uses changed, and a number of nonparties to the original action weighed in with anecdotes and opinions that helped sway the Supreme Court in Sony´s favor.

Be my neighbor. Fred "Mister" Rogers, for one, did not share the movie studios´ outrage over people who taped a TV show and watched it later. The more viewers and viewings, the merrier, was his thinking. The Napster legal team has been out gathering testimony from copyright owners who, like Rogers, might like to see their creations shared in a vast anonymous network. Patel´s decision, if upheld, could slow "the dissemination of important therapeutic medical information," the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons warns in one of a number of friend-of-the-court briefs that have been added to the record.

By Judge Patel´s logic, according to a brief filed by the Digital Media Association, "new technologies will be judged for life by a snapshot of their creator´s intent . . . rather than by their legitimate capabilities for evolutionary change."

Thanks partly to the publicity of the lawsuit, Napster claims to be attracting some 250,000 new users a week. While the plaintiffs will try to present this increased volume of use as evidence of mounting harm, the courts often find it difficult to go against a practice that has become so entrenched. By the end of the Betamax case´s seven-year journey through the legal process, millions of Americans owned VCRs, though, ironically, Sony had lost much of the market to a rival format. By then, too, the movie studios had plunged, one by one, into the prerecorded-video business. Napster is already trying to strike deals with some of the major record labels. While none so far seems tempted by its blandishments, there´s no telling what might happen before the last judicial word is spoken

Source U.S. News