A group of technology experts issued a statement to the U.S. Congress on 1.13.04 expressing the opinion that P2P software provider Sharman Networks has the ability to prevent copyrighted material from being sent around the KaZaA network.
This is in direct conflict with the trial court’s findings in the Grokster case I discussed at EASL’s Dangerous Entertainment Seminar, and was in fact the main reason the trial court denied plaintiffs’ motion for a premlinary injunction based on the complaint for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. As further discussed, the Grokster Court welcomed a legislative solution in refusing to extend the copyright holders’ monopoly.
On 1/13/04 technologists acting on behalf of porn publisher Titan Media reported to Congress that P2P networks could (if they wanted to) use “fingerprinting” (aka hashing“) to detect copyrighted works and then filter them with the “spyware” installed on all nodes in the network.