Sorry, I can’t leave the MGM v. Grokster case alone. Ben Hammersley, he of utility kilts and the Observer Blog nails exactly what I’ve been thinking:
Declaring filesharing illegal across the net because it’s illegal in the US is like declaring the web broken because it’s censored in China.
This seems to be following a distinctly unilateral trend for the US – what with their leadership’s attitude to climate change, Guantanamo and Iraq, the pattern seems to be one of “to hell with the rest of the world, we’ll go our own way”. To which the rest of the world replies “fine, we’ll get on with it, then.”
A casual browse of Tom Peters’ blog will throw up any number of statistics about the staggering size and power of the Chinese and Indian economies. Production of virtually everything from consumer electronics to clothing is the preserve of the Pacific Rim. The largest film industry is in Bollywood, not Hollywood. So what chance that a software developer in Beijing or Shanghai or Mumbai or Bangalore is going to pay any attention whatsoever to a pronouncement from the US Supreme Court?
