Mark Cuban enters the P2P Fray ... The Grokster fight is close to being even ...

Submitted by Patrick Grote on Sun, 03/27/2005 - 2:40pm.

If you haven't been following the latest in the P2P world, you may have missed the upcoming Supreme Court arguments of MGM vs. Grokster. The EFF is handling the case and has a big fight on their hands.

The date of the arguments is March 29, 2005 and pits the entertainment industry against the P2P industry. The entertainment industry is arguing that Grokster is allowing people to illegally download copyrighted material. The EFF is arguing that as long as the tool has other non-infringing uses the distributor cannot be held liable. The EFF maintains that this precedent was set in the Sony Betamax case.

Today Mark Cuban entered the fight and admitted he has been supporting the EFF effort financially. This is an important revelation as Mark is a content creator. Digital content creator.

"So now the truth has been told. This isnt the big content companies against the technology companies. This is the big content companies, against me. Mark Cuban and my little content company. Its about our ability to use future innovations to compete vs their ability to use the courts to shut down our ability to compete. its that simple."

Mark explains his decision and it makes perfect sense. Mark's position is best demonstrated by this:

"Software doesnt steal content, people steal content, they convince them that if it can impact the music business, it should be outlawed because somehow it will."

Good luck to Mark and the EFF!