Currently, the music industry... with Sony as one of the recording giants... is suing the makers of file-sharing software because that technology can be used to make illegal copies of copyright protected songs.
Tech firms such as Intel, their trade associations and groups of computer scientists, venture capitalists and intellectual-property experts have weighed in on the side of Grokster and StreamCast, saying suits against file-sharing software distributors would discourage inventors.
They warned the court against altering guidelines it set in a narrowly decided 1984 case about liability developers have for potential misuse of their products. In that case, the court found that
Sony , maker of the Betamax VCR, was not liable if people used its product to violate copyrights if the product was also ``capable of substantial non-infringing uses.'' Those rules have become known as ``the Magna Carta of the technology age'' because they laid the legal groundwork for the technology boom that began in the 1990s. Grokster and StreamCast have based their defense on that ruling.
Sony benefitted from the 1984 rule immensely; Sony now argues the ruling is unfair.
Irony.