By their periodic attempts to tie peer-to-peer file swapping networks to child porn, Hollywood and the music industry have acquired an ordinarily unlikely ally in their battle against P2P: the Christian Coalition of America.
"Hollywood is definitely a strange bedfellow to most of us," said CCA vice president of legislative affairs Jim Backlin to the Associated Press over the weekend. "Our goal was to cut down child pornography and other kinds of pornography, and if for some reason we were allied with the Hollywood types this time, so be it."
This newfound affiliation proved mildly amusing to the former chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America. "There is a bizarre but cool irony to the conservatives who hate the media we produce but defend to the death our right to make money when we produce it," said Hilary Rosen, who added that an alliance against P2P in this instance doesn't exactly portend a cozier relationship between the entertainment industry and social conservatives in the future.
The comments came as the movie industry and the P2P community prepares for the U.S. Supreme Court's hearing the case of MGM v. Grokster, StreamCast. The high court is expected to begin hearing the case March 29, but briefs from both sides and their allies are due March 1.
"This is the Hail Mary pass on the part of the content industry to try to put the entire technology sector under their thumb," said Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Fred von Lohmann, whose group represents StreamCast, the parent of P2P network Morpheus. "That's something they could never get Congress to do, but that's precisely what they would like the Supreme Court to do for them."
A federal judge ruled in 2003 that Grokster and Morpheus could not be held liable for copyright infringement activity engaged by users, particularly because neither network keeps any movie or music files on its own servers. A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in August 2004. Fifteen trade groups including the Video Software Dealers Association asked the Supreme Court to review the case, and in December 2004 the high court agreed to do so.
"We think there's a distinction between analyzing the legality of a technology and analyzing the legality of a company or a company's behavior," said Digital Media Association executive director Jonathan Potter, whose group's members include Apple and Microsoft. "We don't think companies who create technology should be liable for other uses of the technology."
