The Solicitor General of the U.S. has petitioned the Supreme Court for 10 minutes in which to argue on behalf of the content industries, who would cede the time from their allotment.

This throws the full and considerable weight of the government onto the scales.

Even without the benefit of the as-yet unfiled briefs for Grokster, I assess the chances that the Ninth Circuit will be reversed at close to 100%. The issue is the terms of that reversal and how it will fit with Sony.

As noted earlier, the Copyright Office has a webpage with all the Grokster briefs, but it does not have this petition. Nor is the petition posted on DOJ's website.

The SG argues:

This case presents the question of the corrrect legal standard to govern claims of secondary liability for copyright infringement asserted by copyright owners against providers of Internet music and movie-swapping networks based on the large volume of piracy that users engage in over those networks. The government has filed an amicus brief arguing that the court of appeals erred in holding that respondents were immune from secondary liability based on the mere possibility that respondents' networks could be used for permissible file-sharing. The United States argues that petitioners' evidence to the effect that respondents built their businesses on the lure of copyright infringment and, further, that respondents actively induced such copyright infringement in order to grow their businesses would be sufficient to support a finding of contributory liability.

The United States has a substantial interest in this case. The Court's resolution of the question presented will have significant implications for the ability of copyright owners to enforce their rights effectively through civil litigation. A diminution in civil enforcement of copyrights could threaten an important segment of the national economy and tend to shift the burden of enforcing copyrights to the Department of Justice, which is responsible for the criminal enforcement of the copyright laws.

posted by James DeLong @ 8:25 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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