judgment on the narrow ground of Grokster's alleged inducement of its customers to use the product illegally. In the Grokster ruling, the Court as a whole did not reach a decision to formally overturn the Sony precedent, and instead partially applied it to the specific issues raised by the Grokster and Streamcast technologies. Justice Souter noted: "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 noninfringing uses. Such a holding would tread too close to the Sony safe harbor." Thus, the Grokster ruling was limited to the specific technologies at issue in the case. Subsequent developments The Grokster decision has been hailed by legal researchers as striking a fair balance between the need to respect the copyrights of artists, and the benefits of allowing and promoting technological innovation. Conversely, others have criticized the decision for its apparent vagueness, contending that it permits financially powerful organizations like the RIAA and MPAA to effectively hinder development of new technology by actively engaging in litigation against the developers and distributors of new technologies. On November 7, 2005 Grokster announced that it would no longer offer its peer-to-peer file sharing service. As part of a civil lawsuit enabled by this Supreme Court ruling, Grokster was forced to pay $50 million to various companies in the music and movie industries. Stating in 2008, visitors to the Grokster website (www.grokster.com) encountered this message: "YOUR IP address [...] HAS BEEN LOGGED. Don't think you can't get caught. You are not anonymous." Streamcast continued to fight the suit on remand. On September 27, 2006, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled in favor of the entertainment companies and held Streamcast liable for the infringement of its users. Fearing similar lawsuits, Mark Gorton of LimeWire vowed to stop distributing his file sharing program. A lawsuit was brought against LimeWire, Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC (2010), also led to a ruling in favor of the entertainment industry and an injunction against use of the software. Following that ruling, the download page for the free LimeWire client has a footnote stating: "The download, however, is not a license to upload or download copyrighted material. We urge you to respect copyright and share responsibly." References External links