Grokster Website

By Eric Goldman

I wanted to see what was going on now at the Grokster website, so I checked out www.grokster.com today. I got this stern lecture:

The United States Supreme Court unanimously confirmed that using this service to trade copyrighted material is illegal. Copying copyrighted motion picture and music files using unauthorized peer-to-peer services is illegal and is prosecuted by copyright owners.

There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS [redacted] AND HAS BEEN LOGGED. Don’t think you can’t get caught. You are not anonymous.

In the meantime, please visit www.respectcopyrights.com and www.musicunited.org to learn more about copyright.

I’m not sure I agree with the characterization of the Supreme Court opinion. But I love the fact that they logged the IP address of an academic researcher merely because I visited the site’s home page. Although, I’ll admit, that sure does sound scary!