September 28, 2005
eDonkey to become “closed,” filtered P2P; Senate Holds Grokster Hearing
Testimony of Sam Yagan, President of MetaMachine, creators of eDonkey:
worse when MetaMachine received one of the previously described
cease-and-desist letters from the Recording Industry Association of
America (RIAA). This threat of imminent litigation from the major music
labels, coming in light of the Supreme Court’s ambiguous ruling led us
to conclude that, regardless of the virtue and lawfulness of our
intentions and practices and our confidence that we never intentionally
induced infringing activity, we did not have the resources to endure
the protracted litigation that the RIAA letter presaged.
“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 environment. I
expect such a transaction to take place as soon as we can reach a
settlement with the RIAA. We hope that the RIAA and other rights
holders will be happy with our decision to comply with their request
and will appreciate our cooperation to convert eDonkey users to a
sanctioned P2P environment.” (emphasis added)
It’s worth reading the whole thing, as well as testimony from others at today’s Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing. Mary Beth Peters suggested
that no legislation is necessary with respect to secondary copyright
infringement, but continued to push for reform of Section 115.
Mark Lemley offered
three legislative areas worth attention: making suing for direct
infringement easier, reducing barriers to rights clearance (e.g.,
Section 115 reform), and limiting statutory damages for secondary
infringers.
Filed by Derek Slater at 3:27 pm under General news
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