SUPREME COURT RULES AGAINST GROKSTER... LESSIG SPEAKS OUT!

Not sure about the "whys" behind this ruling yet, but it will be interesting to see how this affects the P2P space. News.com has a good overview of articles:

Movie studios and record labels win a sweeping victory against file swapping as the Supreme Court rules that peer-to-peer companies such as Grokster can be held liable for the copyright piracy on their networks. (special report page)

HatTip to BusinessWeek's Rob Hof. Prof. Lessig's take on this:

"By making it a process that goes through the courts, you’ve just increased the legal uncertainty around innovation substantially and created great opportunities to defeat legitimate competition. You’ve shifted an enormous amount of power to those who oppose new types of competitive technologies. Even if in the end, you as the innovator are right, you still spent your money on lawyers instead of on marketing or a new technology."

"Already, money has shifted into places which will avoid any conflict with the copyright holders. Why buy a lawsuit when you can buy a new innovation that doesn’t get you a lawsuit? And you don’t even see it; you don’t even know what you don’t get, because people are afraid."

"It might take 10 years of litigation to get a clear sense of this. That’s 10 years of chilled innovation."