The Supreme Court decision came down in June, but it looks like action is only being taken now.

From a legal standpoint, the Supreme Court’s analysis is a little wacky, but the result is right. Grokster was actively promoting its product as a way to help people infringe. They circulated internal documents that basically said, “Let’s ride on all this copyrighted material to sell advertising and make lots of money. We’ll be the next Napster.” That was pretty dumb. They deserve to be shut down. The worst of it is that they actually said the goal was to get taken to court and sued. They got their wish.

While I’m all for nixing the current structure of the music industry in place of a more DIY approach, I’m not for blatantly ripping off music and laughing in artist’s faces. Though the lower courts in the Grokster case sided with Grokster, the Supreme Court swiftly and thoroughly vacated their logic in favor of something that made more, though not complete, sense.

Part of why the Grokster case was so big is because everyone was hoping the Supreme Court would explain an old case it decided in 1984 about VCRs (then called VTRs). In Universal City Studios v. Sony, the plaintiff said Sony was secondarily liable for people recording their movies because Sony provided the tool to infringe. The Supreme Court disagreed, concluding there were “commercially significant noninfringing uses.” In terms of establishing a workable test that can be applied to other situations, that sucks. It doesn’t mean anything. What’s a commercially significant noninfringing use? Who decides? Do we need market experts? Technology experts? Since the Grokster case is similar to Sony, copyright geeks everywhere were hoping the Court would expound a little bit on what it was talking about when it wrote Sony in 1984.

Alas, it said Hell No. There is no reason to go into Sony. Since in this case there is direct inducement to infringe, we don’t even need to look at what a substantial (significant, whatever) noninfringing use is. They’re guilty simply because they so strongly advocated an infringing use.

On the bright side, I did detect a little skepticism on the Court’s part that this process – make new technology, help people infringe, get sued – will result in a never ending cycle. Technology will always find a way. It always has. Coders love a challenge. I also found it funny when Justice Souter made references to both Wilco and Modest Mouse in the decision.

With that, Grokster leaves with its tail between its legs and a posting on its website that looks like something they were instructed to say: “There are legal services for downloading music and movies. This service is not one of them.” Ouch. But, they do plan on creating a legal iTunes-ish service. As soon as they figure out how to pay that fifty million dollar settlement.