Vicarious liability for infringement

When is it proper to hold one person liable for the harm caused by the acts of another person? How should courts decide that? Let’s consider that in the context of manufacturers and disseminators of innovative products such as player-piano rolls, copiers, videocassette recorders (VCRs), TiVo, and Grokster. Each of these technological advances has challenged copyright law. Courts had to decide, for example, whether Sony should be held liable to motion picture copyright owners when purchasers of Betamax VCRs used them to copy films that were broadcast on TV; see Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 US 417 (1984). Napster and then Grokster each became a focus of litigation when millions of users downloaded these programs from the Internet and proceeded to use them to facilitate widespread file swapping of copyright-protected songs. Such peer-to-peer (P2P) file-swapping has now become a cause celebre for owners of copyright-protected music, and they have succeeded in persuading prominent members of the US Congress to support legislation to suppress the new P2P technology. As of the date of this edit, it is uncertain whether the bill will be rushed through Congress or slowed down for more study in the light of protests from the technology industry and the IEEE.