Hatch, Leahy seek copyright-law ruling

WASHINGTON — Who says Republicans and Democrats can't get along?

In a bipartisan display of solidarity — and in an unusual legal move — Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., have filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, urging the justices to hear a case with profound implications for copyright law as it applies to peer-to-peer file-sharing.

"Both Congress and the courts have roles in resolving questions as important as those raised by the Grokster case, and . . . it is up to the court to decide this important question of whether to hold certain peer-to-peer networks liable under current copyright laws," said Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Leahy and Hatch have been pioneers on technology matters and copyright protections.

A Hatch spokesman said the request to the high court does not take any position other than their belief the case needs to be decided on its merits.

The case is that of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster, a peer-to-peer file sharing network. MGM has alleged the networks are liable for massive copyright infringement. But the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the networks, saying current secondary liability rules do not apply to this technology.

"Courts have developed and administered secondary liability rules in virtually all areas of the law," said Hatch, the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "And the Supreme Court has stressed that liability should depend not upon the technology but upon whether the facts of a particular case make it just to hold one person accountable for the acts of another."

At the heart of the issue is a Supreme Court case two decades ago in which the court ruled Sony was not responsible for copyright violations committed by customers using its Betamax video recorders.

Free market experts believe that ruling created an environment wherein high-tech product development could thrive.

But laws have not always kept pace with technology, and lawmakers have been slow to react.

In the last Congress, Hatch and Leahy co-sponsored the Inducing Infringement of Copyright Act of 2004. The bill took narrow aim at the intentional inducement of others to commit copyright infringement, such as people who seek to profit from promoting copyright infringement.

"Congress certainly plays a central role in keeping intellectual property laws up to date, but the courts generally — and the Supreme Court in particular — play a critical role in determining when those laws have been broken, and by whom," Leahy added.

Hatch will serve as the chairman of the Intellectual Property Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the coming 109th Congress. Leahy will serve as the subcommittee's ranking Democrat.

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E-mail: spang@desnews.com