The ruling is expected to have very little impact on consumers and their online habits, but it does hold a devastating punishment for peer-to-peer software companies that could be considered ‘promoters’ of illegal file swapping.
In Monday’s ruling, the court said that Gokster Ltd. and Streamcast Networks Inc., both developers of P2P software, did not try to prohibit the sharing of illegal content and therefore can be sued because they are encouraging its users to swap files that could be considered copyrighted content.
What this could mean for future P2P developers and users is that new safety precautions will need to be put into place to prohibit the sharing of illegal content. It could be argued that the majority of users that use P2P network software do so for illegal reasons, so the outcome of this ruling will have a dramatic impact on revenue that revolves around the P2P industry as a whole.
