P2P: Musicians weigh in

The discussion about file-sharing is definitely heating up – especially in the US, where the Supreme Court will soon hear arguments on this. Today a group of prominent musicians and artists broke ranks with their industry in “urging the Supreme Court not to hold online file-sharing services responsible for the acts of users who illegally trade songs, movies and software,” the Washington Post reports. While (in court documents filed today) they condemn the stealing of copyrighted works, they also argue that that P2P services such as Grokster, Kazaa, and BitTorrent, “provide a legal and critical alternative for artists to distribute their material.” To many musicians, they add, the benefits of file-sharing far outweigh the risks of copyright infringement. Legal docs on the P2P issue (Supreme and lower courts) can be found on this page at FindLaw . Earlier this week, the Post had a fulsome update on the file-sharing scene. For a parent’s-eye-view, see my “File-sharing realities for families.”