IP Democracy: Post-Grokster: P2P More Popular Than Ever

The San Jose Mercury News’ John Boudreau has this piece on the impact of the Supreme Court’s Grokster decision, which was handed down one year ago today. Much to the surprise of no one outside the recorded music industry, peer-to-peer file-sharing has only grown since the landmark decision.

Meanwhile, file-sharing, most of which is illegal, continues to grow. Nearly 10 million users worldwide simultaneously clicked into peer-to-peer technology last month — 12 percent more than May, 2005, according to BigChampagne, a Los Angeles research firm that monitors file-sharing.

Despite the legal boost that Grokster gave the music industry — the case spurred intensified litgation against file-sharers — the industry might be starting to lose its appetite for lawsuits in the face of so much futility.

“There are some people inside of record labels who admit that they are not doing the right thing in certain cases. There is some resistance” to the digital era, said Ali Aydar, the first employee of Napster, the pioneering peer-to-peer music sharing network that eventually went bankrupt after battling the record industry.

Even though he says that the legal marketplace is “our hope for the future,” RIAA CEO Mitch Bainwol also conceded that P2P is “not consuming all the digital oxygen in the marketplace.”

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on June 27, 2006 10:25 AM to IP Democracy