Having lost a big lawsuit brought by copyright holders and taken all the way to the US Supreme Court, the Grokster peer-to-peer file sharing service has been shut down. The AP reports that it has agreed to the shutdown in settlement of the lawsuit, though no details have been publicly disclosed.
According to the AP story,
Grokster's Web site was changed to display a message that its file- sharing service was illegal and no longer available. "There are legal services for downloading music and movies," the message said. "This service is not one of them."
However, I'm not getting even that. The page cannot be displayed. The Grokster.com homepage now appears to simply be dead.
Article comments
1 - Tan The Man
Wow... I sure do remember my grokster days...
2 - Temple A. Stark
The first time I visited grokster.com was just now.
This is what it says
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.
Grokster hopes to have a safe and legal service available soon.
If you are interested in that service, go to www.grokster3g.com, or send an email to:
info @ grokster3g.com
to be included in the beta for the next generation.
In the meantime, please visit www.respectcopyrights.com and www.musicunited.org to learn more about copyright.
3 - Al Barger
Temple, it doens't make sense that the page would be entirely shut down, so maybe it's some co-incidental technical problem. Still, I'm gettin' dead air.
4 - Phillip Winn
No problems seeing the page here, so it sounds like a coincidental technical problem for you.
5 - Marcia L. Neil
Busy, busy RIAA! But where are the bar-code type sound spectrograph bar-chart identifiers on each album? The personal attacks continue, without any effort to provide accurate reference so as to assure accurate recognition.
6 - uao
Limewire is still out there. For how much longer, I don't know. I notice the pickin's have been getting slimmer over the last few months. Now might be the time to go hog-wild, if its days are numbered.