The US Supreme Court ruled today in MGM vs Grokster. While the court ruled in favor of MGM, the ruling is not the death of P2P that many might thought it would be. As Justics Souter explains in the ruling,

We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.

Clearly, then, the liability is limited to those who would distribute P2P specficially for copyright infringement. As Picker MobBlog points out,

MGM won on paper today, but my first reading of the opinion makes me wonder whether the victory will have any bite outside of this specific litigation. Intent-based standards, after all, are among the easiest to avoid. Just keep your message clear -- tell everyone that your technology is designed to facilitate only authorized exchange -- and you have no risk of accountability.

All-in-all, this sounds like an acceptable ruling to me that doesn't rule out P2P for non-infringing uses and will deter the content industries from seeking legislative solutions that could possibly close down P2P use all together. IMHO, any organization/company that markets a technology directly for illegal use does deserve to be liable. Seems fair.

More good coverage at The Importance of