Grokster: The Line In The Sand on File-Swapping

The fair use provisions of the Copyright Act, which seek to balance the rights of copyright owners and those of copyright users, are remarkably fertile ground for litigation. Particularly contentious questions have involved technologies that reproduce and transmit information, including copyrighted content. The Supreme Court weighed in on this debate in its seminal decision in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., the so-called "Betamax" case. The Betamax Court held that use of VCRs to "time-shift," i.e. to record programs for viewing at a more convenient time, was a fair, legitimate non-infringing use, and that sale of VCRs therefore did not constitute contributory copyright infringement...