Supremes to take the ‘enabling infringement’ case

From today’s NYT:

“WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 – The Supreme Court, accepting urgent pleas from the recording and film industries, agreed on Friday to decide whether the online services that enable copyrighted songs and movies to be shared freely over the Internet can be held liable themselves for aiding copyright infringement.

For the entertainment industry and for everyday consumers, the case is likely to produce the most important copyright decision since the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 that the makers of the videocassette recorder were not liable for violating the copyrights of movies that owners of the devices recorded at home.”

We’re back to Sony vs. Universal in 1984 when the Court ruled by a whisker that makers of the videocassette recorder were not liable for violating the copyrights of movies that owners of the devices recorded at home. Ed Felten has an entertaining account of this in his Princeton President’s Lecture