Bodroghkozy, Aniko. "Reel Revolutionaries: an Examination of Hollywood's Cycle of 1960s Youth Rebellion Films." Cinema Journal 41 (2002): 38-58. JSTOR. UPenn, Philadelphia. 8 Apr. 2008. Keyword: 1960s counterculture culture america hippie.

    This article explains how studios in the 1960s attempted to attract young moviegoers (18-30 year olds) by making films about campus activism and youth protest. Author Aniko Bodroghkozy discusses how these films represented campus turmoil, the radicalization of young people, and the violence associated with student rebellion. Cinema audiences were dwindling in the 1960s, mostly due to the demise of the family audience. The expansion of suburban America was keeping the family away from the movies and opting for other enterainment such as television and recreation. MGM was one of the first studios to attempt to bring the youth back to the box office. Louis Polk became president of MGM in 1968 and recognized this problem in the industry. Joseph Levine, head of Avco Embassy Productions, called these youth-oriented films "nonconformist cinema." The Graduate had been wonderfully successful for Embassy. Unlike Levine, some film industry executives were uncomfortable with the antiestablishment views, politics, and values associated with these films and thought they would hinder international sales. Directors and producers were able to frame these rebellious movies by focusing on the main characters instead of the radical mobs. Films such as The Strawberry Statement and Getting Straight were about campus uprisings, but their creators framed them as films about individuals having identity crises in the midst of rebellious college campuses.
    Nevertheless, there was certainly a conflict between the revolutionary youth politics and mainstream American culture that had to be addressed. The Graduate was revolutionary in that it addressed this chasm in a subtle way. Rather than focusing on the rebellious protests and political rallies that personify the 1960s, Nichols' masterpiece simply portrayed one young man's questioning of his parent's values. Despite his preppy wardrobe, Benjamin Braddock represents the youth counterculture of the 1960s. His parents, always talking down to him and asking about his plans, represent the American society that the 1960s youth generation absolutely cannot stand. At a time when other studios were trying to appeal to college age audiences, MGM was ahead of its time and succeeded with The Graduate.

This article is short, but it is a contemporary reaction to the Grokster decision, and the worries expressed in it (almost a year and a half ago) are still very relevant today. Currently, products like TiVo and Slingbox are being called guilty of “place-shifting.” This phrase is similar to the “time-shifting” ideology of the Sony case, which was then considered to be a fair use. With technology like TiVo or Slingbox, the general consensus is that it is not just time that is being shifted, but the place where one watches as well. For example, the Slingbox connects to a television set and then gives the owner the option of watching whatever is broadcast on that television on their laptop even if they are in a different city or state. Thus far, this has not been said to be illegal, but, as this article suggests, a law suit may not be far off on the horizon.

This article quotes from an article in the Hollywood Reporter, which explicitly asked for technology to be incorporated in to the Slingbox product that “will respect copyright.” In other words, it almost sounds as if Hollywood is asking for Slingbox to include a filter. One of the reasons that Grokster was found to be guilty was because there was no filtering mechanism used in the technology. However, the court explicitly stated that the lack of filtration system alone would not be enough to find guilt but would be additional evidence in a situation where other factors led to the appearance of guilt.

And therein lays the biggest part of the dilemma: Slingbox and TiVo and other Me2Me file-sharing has not been said to be illegal, but it has also not been legally ruled as being fair use either. Therefore, as this article asks, if these companies “lose on fair use, are they automatically liable for inducement?” Although many people may be inclined to say no, the Grokster decision may actually make it so they would be liable for inducement. Additionally, these technologies are already being called out for not having filtration systems, which will only come back to haunt them – as it did with Grokster and Napster before it – and may contribute to their being found guilty if they are ever brought to trial.

Before the Grokster ruling, these sorts of companies would only have to have proved that “any substantial use of their product” was non-infringing, however now they may be expected to prove that “every” use of their product is non-infringing. This might be over-exaggerating the situation, but it does illustrate what sort of effect the Grokster decision might have in the future. And, seeing as how now, in the winter of 2006, which are a year and a half into the future since this article was written, it seems that this claim of a future chilling effect is really more accurate than innovators and digital media inventers would’ve liked to admit at the time.

In this article, Andrew Beckerman-Rodau asks whether the Grokster ruling was really a good decision or simply judicial activism. Judicial activism refers to the practice of a court not interpreting the law as it already exists but rather legislating from the bench and creating new legal interpretations. Beckerman-Rodau writes that the Grokster decision rightly recognizes “the conflicting goals which had to be balanced: protecting intellectual property to promote creative activities; and, the importance of not impeding creative and innovative conduct.”

Overall, Beckerman-Rodau also writes that the Grokster decision “does not represent a novel interpretation of the law. Rather, it is consistent with the underlying principles of intellectual property law and it is based on established unfair competition theory which is supported by existing precedent.”

The article begins with “an overview of the decision,” first looking at the facts of the case. Then it discusses what the court did decide – the application of the inducement theory – and what it did not decide – the ramifications of the Sony decision in this context. Then it goes on to deal with the underlying policy considerations of the case. In both Sony and Grokster the same conflicting policy concerns are raised, which deal with “the underlying policy of promoting creativity and innovation by granting property protection for the results of such activity versus withholding such property protection to avoid impeding technological developments.” Beckerman-Rodau states that “copyright law exists to provide benefits to the public, not to maximize economic benefit flowing to a creator.” The Grokster decision went in favor of the content holders, those looking to reap the maximum economic benefit.

The article continues by looking at the application of the new inducement theory. First, it looks at the iPod, stating that although the device has illegal uses and Apple is aware of the potential for infringement the knowledge alone is not enough to hold them liable. The fact that Apple has provided iPod owners with a legal model for acquiring music, iTunes, only further helps Apple avoid liability. Secondly, the article looks at the legality of DVRS – meaning digital video recorders such as Tivo. Again, this service does not encourage users to engage in illegal activity and does not intend for infringing activities to be its primary usage.

Finally Beckerman-Rodau concludes with a recommendation for the lower courts’ application of the Grokster decision. He writes that a good way to balance the concerns of chilling innovation with the concerns of allowing infringement to occur “would be to require sufficient proof of intent to meet the clear and convincing evidence standard for inducement liability. This would avoid chilling innovation because inducement liability would only apply in situations where it is obvious that a product is being distributed with the clear intent that it be used for infringing activity. Additionally, this heightened standard would not affect the ability of a copyright owner to sue direct infringers.”

Whether courts will take this sort of advice is yet to be determined, but Beckerman-Rodau clearly states that the court, in this instance, was not legislating from the bench and instead codifying “preexisting judicially recognized doctrines” in order to make a ruling in contentious legal territory. As Beckerman-Rodau suggests, online copyright liability is an area of law that is only beginning to come into the forefront of legal decision making and liability discussions and will be debated long into the future.

The full effect of the Grokster case is still yet to be determined. The case itself is important in current discussions of copyright law because of the way the Inducement Doctrine was used in reference to copyright. The case is also significant because it touched on the highly contentious issue of when and to what extent a distributor can be held liable for the infringement of individual users.

The case itself did not just concern Grokster, but also Morpheus, KaZaA and StreamCast. 28 of the world's largest entertainment companies brought a lawsuit against them, hoping to establish a new precedent to be used against other technology companies mostly in the realm of, but not limited to, peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.

Originally in the case, the Ninth Circuit court ruled that the companies responsible for distributing Grokster and the other services could not be held liable for the violations of its users because of precedent of the Sony ruling, which found that distributors could not be held liable for the infringing activities of its users so long as the tool was capable of substantial non-infringing uses. However, the Supreme Court set aside this ruling. The Court did not overturn the Sony Doctrine, but it did not re-interpret it either. Instead, the Court chose to turn to the Inducement Doctrine. Now, in addition to the uncertainty regarding contributory infringement and vicarious liability, innovators must also contend with the problems of inducement.

The court’s holding stated that “for the same reasons that Sony took the staple-article doctrine of patent law as a model for its copyright safe-harbor rule, the inducement rule, too, is a sensible one for copyright. We adopt it here, holding that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."

In the final decision, the Supreme Court found the defendants guilty of inducement for three main reasons. First, the companies showed that they were “aiming to satisfy a known source of demand for copyright infringement, the market comprising former Napster users.” The court looked at the companies’ internal communication and found several documents that made “constant reference” to the model and practice of Napster. Secondly, MGM was able to show that none of the company’s attempted to develop filtering tools or other mechanisms to diminish the infringing activity, which the Supreme Court felt underscored “Grokster’s and SteamCast’s intentional facilitation of their users’ infringement. (The Ninth Circuit looked at the lack of such tools as “irrelevant” because the companies “lacked an independent duty to monitor their users’ activity.”) Additionally, though, the Supreme Court decision stated that “in the absence of other evidence of intent, a court would be unable to find contributory infringement liability merely based on a failure to take affirmative steps to prevent infringement, if the device otherwise was capable of substantial non-infringing uses. Such a holding would tread too close to the Sony safe harbor.” Thirdly, the Court concluded that the companies’ selling advertising space was further evidence of unlawful objectives. The court stated that “the more the software is used, the more ads are sent out and the greater the advertising revenue becomes. Since the extent of the software's use determines the gain to the distributors, the commercial sense of their enterprise turns on high-volume use, which the record shows is infringing."

This article is written by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a non-profit interest group that “seeks to promote free expression, privacy, and individual liberty on the open, decentralized internet.” This document “outlines the limits on the scope of secondary copyright liability,” looking at the Grokster decision, the landmark decision in Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc. (1984), and patent law precedents relating to inducement liability. The goal of this investigation is to make sure that "secondary liability for copyright infringement does nothing to compromise legitimate commerce or discourage innovation having lawful promise.’” The Grokster case and the Sony decision can obviously be looked at be looked at individually, but this article does a nice job of synthesizing the information and explaining how they impact each other.

The article focuses on the new implications of the “inducement test,” what repercussions the situation has for the Sony rule and what this all means for vicarious liability. The article focuses on one key difference in clarification between the Grokster and Sony decisions. The language in the Grokster decisions "suggests that the Sony test focuses on 'substantial' non-infringing uses, not 'commercially significant' non-infringing uses." With Grokster, the emphasis was certainly placed on the commerical uses of the site. Monetary gains became one of the most significant factors of the case, not just ethical or legal implications. Certainly the internet is just as much a business as any other commerical frontier in the world, but more and more - especially illustrated with the Grokster decision - financial viability is the determining legal decision making. For example, today YouTube is currently seen as protected by the safe harbor provison, although some of the content being posted on YouTube today was possibly (or probably) also availible on Grokster. YouTube has been able to position itself not only in a safe harbor in a legal sense, but also in a financial sense by teaming up with companies who own many of the copyrighted works that are being infringed.

Of course the Sony case was also motivated by money, but more than ever before the current world of the web and the sites that are allowed to function within its borders are completely a function of their monetary potential for copyright holders. Grokster was taken to court because it posed a threat to the financial success of copyright holders. YouTube poses a similar threat as well, but thus far has been able to keep in partnership with the people who would be taking them to court in the first place.