Sony BMG wants to use a legitimate version of Grokster

Sony BMG wants to use a legitimate version of Grokster

A ruling just came from the United States Supreme Court enabling the RIAA and MPAA to sue the P2P application developers for the actions taken by the users of their applications. The case related to this ruling is between MGM Movie Studio and the Grokster Network about the illegal sharing of digitally protected content on the Grokster’s p2p network. Despite the potential legal hassles, Sony BMG has expressed their interest in a legalized version of this service for their file sharing facility in the future.

Andy Lack, chief executive of Sony BMG Music Entertainment said in a statement about their ideas: “I’m hopeful we will move forward with a legitimate version of Grokster. It won’t be called Grokster, and it certainly won’t be what Grokster is today.” He later added: “There’s an opportunity to employ lots of different technologies that legitimize these file sharing services. A lot of them didn’t want to come to the table until this ruling.”

Grokster on their part believes that P2P is not going to go away just like that on the Internet despite this latest ruling and there is little which can prevent the exchange of protected content. Sony on their part have been working with a variety of companies to come up with a technology to let them develop a legalized file sharing network to take on Apple iTunes digital music store.

Snocap comes to mind, which is the latest creation of the developer of the granddaddy of such p2p applications Napster. This technology has a facility to block sharing of illegal files on the network, which is the prime concern for the authorities. Sony is also looking towards Mashboxx for similar solutions.