Hollywood studios and record companies on Friday asked the United States Supreme Court to overturn a controversial series of recent court decisions that have kept file-swapping software legal.
The decisions have been among the biggest setbacks for the entertainment industry in the past several years, as they have tried to quell the rampant exchange of copyrighted materials over peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa and Morpheus. In a joint petition to the Supreme Court, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said that letting the lower court rulings stand would badly undermine the value of copyrighted work.
"This is one of the most important copyright cases ever to reach this court," the groups said in papers filed with the court. "Resolution of the question presented here will largely determine the value, indeed the very significance, of copyright in the digital era." The ongoing case has helped define the limits of what is legal for software companies, as the entertainment companies have tried to hold peer-to-peer developers responsible for the widespread copyright infringement of people using their products.